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                         NUCLEAR POLICY
 
1 [NYTr] US, Israel are the real nuclear threats: Iran
2 Xinhua: Khatami reiterates Tehran's position on nuclear issue   
3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Lawmakers Want Nuclear Development
4 Al Jazeera: Iran council approves nuclear plan - 
5 AU ABC: US, Iran block nuclear non-proliferation discussions
6 Guardian Unlimited: Law Compels Iran to Pursue Nuclear Goals
7 Sunday Times: History: Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday - 
8 Korea Herald: U.S.-North Korea in game of chicken   
9 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Newspaper Smells U.S. Moves to Isolate N.
10 Guardian Unlimited: Cheney: China Key to Ending N. Korea Nukes
11 US: Japan Times: U.S. author pushes alternative energy
12 US: The Day: DEP Gives Sub Base Fresh Look Experts tour facility 
13 US: DAWN: US willing to use N-arms
14 Hankyoreh: [Editorial] Confusing US Actions at a Sensitive Time 
15 Daily Yomiuri: Energy security must be improved
16 BBC: ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1998: World fury at Pakistan's nuclear tests
17 Bellona: Canada can manage reconstruction of ”nuclear” bridge in Sev
18 Bellona: Rosatom: it’s expedient to dismantle RTGs at Mayak
19 RIA Novosti: MOSCOW BLACKOUT CAUSED NO EMERGENCIES IN NUCLEAR PROJEC
20 RIA Novosti: NPT IS THE BASIS FOR MAINTAINING NUCLEAR WEAPONS NON-PR
21 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Treaty Failure Sets Tone for Summit
22 JTW Comment: Atomic Loopholes: Future Tense as Nuclear Treaty Stalls
23 Xinhua: G8 to set no timetable for reducing global warming   
24 Herald Tribune: Kofi A. Annan: Break the nuclear deadlock
25 Scotsman.com: Blair Could 'Go Nuclear' to Bridge Energy Gap
 
                         NUCLEAR REACTORS
 
26 US: Stunning revelation: What good are sirens? (Patriot News)
27 US: JS Online: Taking the heat off Wisconsin 
28 US: JS Online: Slow repairs have utilities sweating 
29 US: Arizona Republic: Changes afoot at nuclear plant
30 US: Portsmouth Herald: Public has right to know about failded Seabro
31 WorldNetDaily: When Greenies go nuclear
32 US: Rutland Herald: State: Uprate review to go on (VY)
33 l'express dimanche: Nuclear Power : rising from the Grave ?   
34 US: Sen Obama: NRC oversight speech
35 US: NRC: Senate hearing comments on by NRC's Diaz on 5/26 (Large)
36 US: Senator Jeffords: NRC oversight statment
37 US: Post-Crescent: Stalled reactors a drain on supply
38 US: Monticello Times: NRC calls 2004 power plant operations ‘very sa
39 Globe and Mail: Nuclear not needed
40 US: Vermont Guardian: State panel withholds approval of Vermont Yank
41 US: WCAX.com: Special NRC panel may hold Vt. hearing on Yankee uprat
42 Guardian Unlimited Max Hastings: Nuclear power is the future
 
                          NUCLEAR SECURITY
 
43 Japan Times: Agency drawing up plan to boost nuclear security
44 Mos News: Terrorists Focused on Nuclear Facilities in Russia — Repor
 
                          NUCLEAR SAFETY
 
45 DU: A Scientific Perspective
46 US: [NukeNet] Cancer Said To Be No.1 Killer Over Heart Disease
47 [du-list] POISON DUST - Dr. Susan Harris DU video
48 US: [DU-WATCH] BIG ANTI DU BILL CENSORED BY PRESS
49 US: [DU-WATCH] Response to Wash. Times on Military Pay
50 US: Hudson Reporter: The dangers of D.U.
51 US: Paducah Sun: Sick worker claims date on track: U.S. - 
 
                         NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
 
52 US: Bradenton Herald: DEP says Tallevast site needs new work
53 Bellona: Thorp Leak at Sellafield continued unchecked for 9 months 
54 BBC: Sellafield leak 'lay
55 Sunday Herald: Publication delay for secret nuclear dump list - 
56 US: The Star: Uranium waste to cross Indiana
57 US: Rutland Herald: Legislators holding dry-cask storage hostage
58 Independent: Revealed: huge Sellafield leak went undetected for 9 mo
59 US: Boston Globe: Shut bases could get nuclear waste - 
60 Cumbria Online: THORP SHOCK 
61 US: Brattleboro Reformer: Agreement is reached on VY waste
 
                           PEACE
 
 
                        US DEPT. OF ENERGY
 
62 New Mexican: Governor urges LANL workers to be vigilant   
63 SF Chronicle: ANALYSIS: Los Alamos contract puts UC in PR battle 
64 Oakland Tribune: Lab rhetoric turns insulting
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                         FULL NEWS STORIES
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 1 [NYTr] US, Israel are the real nuclear threats: Iran
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 17:49:51 -0500 (CDT)

 
Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
Reuters via Yahoo - May 28, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&e=4&u=/nm/20050528/wl_nm/nuclear_arms_iran_dc

Iran says U.S., Israel are the real nuclear threats

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and Israel represent the real
nuclear threat to the world, not Iran, Tehran's chief envoy to the United
Nations said on Friday after an abortive conference on controlling nuclear
weapons.

Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the U.N., said the United States never
intended to scrap its nuclear arsenal, despite promising to eventually
disarm when it signed the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the
landmark arms control pact.

Zarif, in an interview with Reuters, said Israel, which is widely believed
to have nuclear weapons, was the threat to the Middle East region. "There is
unanimity on the threat that is posed not only by Israeli nuclear weapons
but by its aggressive policy (in general)," he said.

Washington is backing efforts by Britain, France and Germany to persuade
Tehran to halt its nuclear fuel program, which they fear may be intended to
make atomic bombs. Iran denies this, insisting its program is peaceful.

Zarif dismissed as hollow U.S. pledges in 1995 and 2000 reaffirming its
commitment to scrap its nuclear arsenal. "The U.S. never had any intention
of living up to its commitments under Article 6 of the treaty," he said.

In Article 6 of the NPT the five treaty signatories with nuclear weapons --
Russia, the United States, France, Britain and China -- agreed to eventually
disarm.

SMOKE SCREEN

Zarif said U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear program were a "smoke screen to
divert attention from its violations" that included a U.S. willingness "to
use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states."

Every five years the 188 members of the NPT meet for a month to review the
landmark treaty. The 2005 review ended on Friday without any agreement on
how to improve the accord. Many delegates blamed both Washington and Tehran
for what they described a failure of the conference to do anything.

Washington worked hard to prevent the conference -- which works by consensus
-- from approving any documents that refer to its 1995 and 2000 pledges to
disarm, while Iran blocked anything that referred to it as a proliferation
threat and NPT violator.

The conference approved a document that merely listed the agenda and the
participants.

Egypt also worked hard to prevent any substantive conclusion from the
conference when it saw it had no chance of focusing criticism on Israel's
assumed atomic arsenal.

"Israel is the threat to the region," he said. "It is one of the great
ironies of our age that a country outside the framework of legality in the
area of nonproliferation is one of the countries that is the most active
participants against Iran," he said.

Like atomic-armed India and Pakistan, Israel has never signed the NPT. It
neither admits nor denies having the bomb, Israel is estimated to have some
200 nuclear warheads.

       
                                *
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.          Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us         .
.339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012     http://www.blythe.org
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 2 Xinhua: Khatami reiterates Tehran's position on nuclear issue   

  www.xinhuanet.com

  www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-29 02:39:50   

    TEHRAN, May 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Iranian President Mohammad
Khatami onSaturday stressed that Iran will never give up its
legitimate rights but will restrict nuclear research into civil
use, the official IRNA news agency reported. 

    "In view of the ongoing progress in the world today, Iran is
entitled to peaceful use of nuclear technology," Khatami was
quoted as saying in a meeting with Mohammad-Mehdi Akhundzadeh,
Iran's ingoing ambassador and permanent envoy to the UN. 

    Khatami said that Iran accepted talks with Europe as a
principleand had thus far extended its "utmost cooperation" in
that field. 

    He reiterated that Iran's activities in the field of nuclear
energy are peaceful and "free from any ambiguity." 

    The Islamic Republic's legislation supervisory body, the
Guardian Council, approved a law that presses the government to
continue its efforts to get access to peaceful nuclear
technology, including uranium enrichment activities. 

    However, the law, passed by the hardliner-dominated Majlis
(parliament) on May 15, does not set a specified date for the
government to resume enrichment activities. 

    Iran held a key round of talks with the European Union (EU)
on Wednesday, during which the two sides prevented the
deadlocked nuclear negotiations from going further into crisis
by virtually prolonging the negotiations to wait for result of
Iran's presidential elections on June 17. 

    During the talks, the EU presented a proposal that portrays
its new position on Iran's nuclear program, according to Iran's
chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani. 

    "The Europeans have proposed to present a comprehensive plan
within the next two months for all-out cooperation with Iran in
different areas including technical and nuclear issues," Rowhani
said on Friday. 

    The current deadlock came as a result of the EU's repeated
rejection to Iran's demand for keeping restricted uranium
activates. 

    In late April, Tehran threatened to resume its highly
sensitive uranium enrichment activities, which it suspended last
November in exchanged for economic and technological incentives
promised by theEU. 

    Tehran's threat was immediately hit back by the EU, which
warnedof backing a US-proposed referral of Iran's nuclear case
to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions on the
country. 

    The United States has accused Iran of developing nuclear
weaponssecretly, a charge rejected by Tehran as politically
motivated. Enditem   


  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 3 Guardian Unlimited: Iran Lawmakers Want Nuclear Development
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday May 28, 2005 11:46 AM

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line Guardian Council on
Saturday approved a law that puts pressure on the government to
develop nuclear technology that could be used to build atomic
weapons, state run radio reported. 

Parliament had passed the bill on May 15 and sent it to the
Guardian Council for approval. The council must vet all bills
before they become law. 

The passing of the law does not force the government to resume
uranium enrichment immediately but encourages it to pursue
nuclear goals in spite of international pressure on Tehran over
its nuclear program. 

The law calls on the government to develop a nuclear fuel cycle,
which would include resuming the process of enriching uranium -
a prospect that has drawn criticism from the United States and
Europe because the technology could be used in developing atomic
weapons. 

Iran suspended enrichment last November under international
pressure led by the United States. Iran maintains its program is
peaceful and only aimed at generating electricity. 

The legislation was viewed as strengthening the government's
hand in negotiations with European Union representatives,
allowing it to demonstrate domestic pressure to pursue its
nuclear program as talks have deadlocked. 

Iran agreed Wednesday to meet with European Union negotiators
for a new round of talks in the summer. 

France, Britain and Germany, acting on behalf of the 25-nation
European Union, want Tehran to abandon its enrichment activities
in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for
Iran's efforts to join the World Trade Organization. 

The European Union has threatened to take Iran to the U.N.
Security Council for possible sanctions if it again starts
uranium reprocessing. Tehran says it won't give up its treaty
rights to enrichment but is prepared to offer guarantees that
its nuclear program won't be diverted to build weapons. 
		 	 	   

      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 4 Al Jazeera: Iran council approves nuclear plan - 

Aljazeera.com      

  5/29/2005 10:00:00 AM GMT   
  
Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani
  
In a move aimed at strengthening Tehran’s hand in negotiations
with the EU, Iran's Guardian Council approved a measure passed
by the parliament earlier this month demanding the government to
develop nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment, the
state-run TV and radio service, Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting reported on Saturday. 

The Guardian Council, which must check all bills before they are
made into law, evaluated the measure and found it not to be
unconstitutional, said a spokesman for the council. 

The law does not force the Iranian government to resume uranium
enrichment immediately, but it insists that the Islamic Republic
must pursue its nuclear goals regardless to the mounting
international pressure. 

The move comes as a clear challenge to European Union; trying to
persuade Iran to suspend its nuclear program, a lawmaker said. 

“Approval of the parliamentary legislation into law by the
Guardian Council means Europeans should forget the idea of
asking Iran to permanently freeze its nuclear activities
forever,” said Nayereh Akhavan, a conservative lawmaker. 

The measure says the government must acquire technology for
peaceful purposes under the framework of the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty and international law. 

The United States claims that Iran is trying to develop nuclear
weapons under the guise of a domestic nuclear program that Iran
affirms is only used for peaceful purposes. 

Earlier this week, officials from Iran and European Union big-
three; Britain, France and Germany met after Iran declared it
will resume uranium enrichment program it agreed to freeze last
November, and the EU, backed with the United States, threatened
to refer Iran’s nuclear case to the UN Security Council for
possible sanctions. 

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told CNN after the meeting,
"What we discussed today, in the first ministerial meeting we've
had for six months with the Iranians, was a set of proposals ...
which had been discussed earlier by our officials with the
Iranians". 

"They're on the table, and we said we would put these in much
more detail by the end of July, beginning of August. And they
would be within the context of the Paris agreement, and also in
the context of the Paris agreement remaining in force. 

"And what the Paris agreement says is that all uranium
enrichment conversion activities are suspended until there is a
long-term agreement in force." 

"The essence of our position was that the negotiations should
not be procrastinated," Hassan Rowhani, Iran's top nuclear
negotiator, told CNN. "We were persistent in asking our European
interlocutors that all of their proposals should be put in one
place and put forward." 

Rowhani said that "from the standpoint that the duration is now
finite," Wednesday's meeting could be considered progress. 

The Iranian negotiator defended Iran against complains that it
had withheld information about its nuclear programs from the
International Atomic Energy Agency, saying the activities the
country withheld from the agency were well within its rights. 

The only violation of international law were "our failures to
report, nothing more," he said, adding that the agency has found
no evidence of enrichment or diversion of materials for
weaponry. 

Nayereh Akhavan, who represents Isfahan, the heart of Iran's
nuclear facilities, said that now the Iranian negotiators will
be required by law to defend the development of nuclear fuel
production facilities. 

“No one will be in a position to ignore the law during
negotiations with Europeans,” she said. Ms. Akhavan. 

   Copyright 2005 Al Jazeera Publishing Limited   
*****************************************************************
 5 AU ABC: US, Iran block nuclear non-proliferation discussions
 
"Australian Broadcasting Corporation Online">   

This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around
Australia at 08:00 on ABC Local Radio. 

AM - Saturday, 28 May , 2005  08:16:00
 
Reporter: John Shovelan
 ELIZABETH JACKSON: The UN conference which aimed to close
loopholes in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, has ended
after a month in dismal failure.

More than 150 countries couldn't agree on what should be
discussed, let alone the final text. Observers say it was the US
and one of the countries it's branded as part of the axis of
evil, Iran, which caused the conference to collapse.

Daryl Kimball of the Arm's Control Association told our
Washington Correspondent John Shovelan neither country wanted to
discuss its own nuclear record.

DARYL KIMBALL: There are two countries that came into this
conference seeking to avoid debate about issues relating to
their record – their non-compliance record. One was Iran. It was
seeking to avoid any debate about its program, any criticism of
its violations of its nuclear safeguards with the International
Atomic Energy Agency. 

And also the United States was seeking to block debates and
discussion of nuclear disarmament measures that it had agreed to
with other countries at the 2000 NPT review conference, but
which the Bush administration no longer supports. And so, those
two countries were obstructing. In addition, I think the review
conference was faced with a leadership deficit. 

JOHN SHOVELAN: So nobody really felt that passionate about it?
Is that the problem?

DARYL KIMBALL: They simply did not have the skills to overcome
the obstacles that were thrown up by two key countries – the
United States being one of them – and they ran out of time,
because of (inaudible) delays.

JOHN SHOVELAN: The previous NPT conferences have been quite
successful haven't they, the previous two?

DARYL KIMBALL: The previous two, exactly.

JOHN SHOVELAN: Does it make any difference in the day-to-day
fight against proliferation, that there was no text out of this
conference?

DARYL KIMBALL: Well, I think in the day-to-day fight, it may
not. But in the long run, it very much does, because we have to
remember that given the number of problems we have, from South
Asia, to North-East Asia, the Middle East, the Khan network, the
threat of nuclear terrorism – we need to use every opportunity
available, and this was a tremendous lost opportunity to advance
progress, to strengthen the effort in various ways. 

It also, I think, is going to lead some of the non-nuclear
weapon states to believe even more strongly than before, that
the US and the other nuclear weapon states do not intend to
fulfil their commitment to reduce and eliminate the role of
nuclear weapons and the number of nuclear weapons. 

And that in the long run, is going to make it much more
difficult to engage them in other efforts, other crises that may
come up in the years ahead to fight proliferation.

JOHN SHOVELAN: Where were the other nuclear powers in the
conference – France, Great Britain, Russia, China – what kind of
role did they play?

DARYL KIMBALL: Well to sum it up, I think that they played a
small role. They could have played a much more important role.
They did not exert leadership either. 

Even though France, Russia and the United Kingdom are strong
supporters of test ban treaty, they for instance, went along
with the United States on several points at this conference in
allowing the US to block discussion of the test ban and these
disarmament issues.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Daryl Kimball of the Arm's Control
Association speaking to Washington Correspondent John Shovelan. 
 
*****************************************************************
 6 Guardian Unlimited: Law Compels Iran to Pursue Nuclear Goals
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 

Saturday May 28, 2005 9:16 PM

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI 

Associated Press Writer 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's hard-line Guardian Council on
Saturday approved a law forcing Iran to develop nuclear
technology, including uranium enrichment, an action aimed at
strengthening Tehran's hand in negotiations with Europeans. 

The law's passage does not compel the government to resume
uranium enrichment immediately, but it insists that Iran must
pursue its nuclear goals even as international pressure over its
ambitions are brought to bear. 

The Council's decision was a clear challenge to European
negotiators trying to persuade Iran to abandon the program, a
lawmaker said. 

``Approval of the parliamentary legislation into law by the
Guardian Council means Europeans should forget the idea of
asking Iran to permanently freeze its nuclear activities
forever,'' said Nayereh Akhavan, a conservative lawmaker. 

Now Iranian negotiators will be required by law to pursue
uranium enrichment and defend the development of nuclear fuel
production facilities, she said. 

``No one will be in a position to ignore the law during
negotiations with Europeans,'' she said. Akhavan represents
Isfahan, a central city where the heart of Iran's nuclear
facilities are located. 

Iran's conservative-dominated Parliament passed the bill on May
15, but the Guardian Council must vet all bills before they
become law. 

The law calls on the government to develop a nuclear fuel cycle,
which would include resuming the process of enriching uranium -
a prospect that has drawn criticism from the United States and
Europe because it could be used to develop atomic weapons. 

Iran suspended enrichment of uranium last November under
international pressure led by the United States, which accuses
Tehran of trying to make nuclear weapons. 

Iran, which maintains its program is peaceful and is aimed only
at generating electricity, has long said its decision in
November to suspend all uranium enrichment-related activities
was voluntary and temporary. The Europeans had offered economic
incentives in the hope of converting the temporary suspension
into a permanent disbandment. 

Iranian officials have suggested accepting a permanent freeze of
nuclear activities would bring down the government because the
program is a matter of national pride. 

The legislation was viewed as strengthening the government's
hand in negotiations with European Union representatives,
allowing it to demonstrate domestic pressure to pursue its
nuclear program since talks were deadlocked. 

France, Britain and Germany, acting on behalf of the 25-nation
European Union, want Tehran to abandon its enrichment activities
in exchange for economic aid, technical support and backing for
Iran's efforts to join the World Trade Organization, or
guarantees from Iran that it will not use its nuclear program to
make weapons, as Washington suspects. 

In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel news weekly published
Saturday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Iran was
``anxious'' to develop nuclear weapons. Musharraf also said a
pre-emptive attack by the United States would be ``a disaster.'' 

``That would provoke a rebellion in the Muslim world,''
Musharraf said. ``Why open up new fronts?'' 

Iran threatened earlier this month to restart some uranium
reprocessing activities, the stage that precedes actual
enrichment of uranium, after failing to make any progress after
several rounds of talks with European negotiators. 

The European Union has warned that it could take Iran to the
U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if it resumes
uranium reprocessing. Enriched uranium is useful in the
generation of electricity, which is permitted under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it also can be turned into nuclear
weapons. 	 
		 	 	   
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 7 Sunday Times: History: Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday - 

thetimes.co.uk

May 29, 2005                   

REVIEWED BY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
 		   		 		
For generations, Mao Tse-tung was the acceptable, even
fashionable face of communist tyranny. Since the 1930s, those
who wished to know have been aware that Stalin was a homicidal
monster. Since 1945, nobody has doubted Hitler’s genocidal evil.
But as I sit here, I am looking at the Little Red Book (the
Quotations of Chairman Mao) that I proudly bought as a
10-year-old schoolboy without much comment from my elders, and
also at the bestselling, sympathetic biographies of Mao by Edgar
Snow (1938) and Han Suyin (1972). Why was Mao so fashionable
that Warhol could choose him as an icon? Perhaps it was because
China remains a distantly obscure country, because Mao was a
master of propaganda and secrecy, and, finally, because his
party still rules China. 

Ever since the Soviet archives started to reveal the intimate
story of Stalin’s tyranny, people have been tempted to compare
Hitler and Stalin. Who killed more people? Who was more
depraved? These ghoulish questions have also given rise to
another silly but sinister argument: “Stalin was worse than
Hitler. Why have we heard so much about the Holocaust, so little
about the Gulags? ” Mao is never mentioned — but he will be now. 

Mao: The Untold Story exposes its subject as probably the most
disgusting of the bloody troika of 20th-century tyrant-messiahs,
in terms of character, deeds — and number of victims. This
study, by Jung Chang, the author of Wild Swans, and her husband,
the historian Jon Halliday, is a triumph. It is a mesmerising
portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a
barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of
research. This is the first intimate, political biography of the
greatest monster of them all — the Red Emperor of China. Using
witnesses in China, and new, secret Chinese archives, the
authors of this magisterial and damning book estimate that Mao
was responsible for 70m deaths. He boasted he was willing “for
half of China to die” to achieve military-nuclear superpowerdom. 

Nikita Khrushchev said: “I look at Mao, I see Stalin, a perfect
copy.” Their attitudes, even their style of dress, their refusal
to earn money or work on anything except their own power, their
obsessional reading of imperial history, poetry writing,
swaggering disdain for human life, their worship of violence,
their loathing of peasants, their superpower ambitions, their
jealousies, their self-belief, secrecy and paranoia, their
loathing of their fathers, respect for their mothers and their
destruction of their own wives and children were almost
identical. The authors point out two key differences: they
believe that Mao was never a Marxist, simply an opportunistic
egomaniac. They record his frenzied womanising: Stalin was far
less of a sensualist. 

Mao was born in 1893 in Hunan. His father was outraged by his
young son’s reading and refusal to work. In a revolutionary
China dominated by warlords (the emperor had been overthrown in
1911) Mao soon joined the Communist party, partly to get money
to avoid working. After Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist leader,
had slaughtered the communists in 1927, Mao emerged as a Red
lead er. At 24, he recorded his amoral philosophy: “People like
me only have a duty to ourselves.” He worshipped “power like a
hurricane arising from a deep gorge, like a sex-maniac on heat .
. . We adore times of war . . . We love sailing the sea of
upheavals . . . The country must be destroyed then re formed . .
. People like me long for its destruction”. 

Mao was happy to murder, blackmail and poison his rivals. He had
the same political gifts as Stalin: a will for power,
ruthlessness, addiction to the drama of turmoil and an ability
to manipulate. In his communist enclaves, between 1931 and 1935,
he oversaw the killing of 700,000 people. Like Stalin, Mao
poisoned everyone whose lives he touched: many went insane. 

By the late 1930s, using gullible writers such as Snow, Mao had
created his legend as a peasant leader and a guerrilla-maestro —
the hero of the Long March. Jung Chang and Halliday shatter
these myths, revealing military ineptitude and deliberate
wastage of whole armies to discredit his communist rivals. The
greatest heroics of the Long March were invented; the suffering
was unnecessary. As the Japanese advanced into China, Mao
persuaded historians that, while he fought the invaders,
Generalissimo Chiang was cowardly and corrupt. Actually, it was
Mao who refused to fight Japan. His sole obsession during the
second world war was persuading Stalin to bankroll and arm his
conquest of China. In 1945, Stalin entered the war against
Japan, providing assistance to Mao. Nonetheless, Mao had
virtually lost the civil war — and was saved only by colossal
Stalinist aid. The authors also reveal how many Nationalist
generals were communist sleeper-spies. In 1949, aided more by
Russia and these moles than by his own devices, Mao conquered
China, embarking on an imperial reign of wilful caprice,
messianic egotism, vast incompetence — and mass-murder. 

The myth claims that there was no Great Terror in China: the
authors show Mao constantly declaring: “Too lenient, not killing
enough.” In 1949 alone, 3m people were murdered. While Mao lived
like an emperor on 50 private estates using military
dancing-girls as “imperial concubines”, he drove China to become
a superpower. He deployed Chinese troops against America in the
Korean w ar as a way of persuading Stalin to give him military
(especially nuclear) technology. After Stalin’s death, he
regarded himself as peerless. 

Emulating Stalin with his manmade 1932-33 famine, Mao in his
Great Leap Forward of the 1950s sold food to buy arms, even
though China starved in “the greatest famine in history”: 38m
people died. The famine caused a political crisis, and his
deputy Liu Shao-chi stole power from him in 1962. 

Mao waited, and avenged himself by taking control of the army
through the talented, neurotic and sinister Marshal Lin Piao,
and of the state through the craven, brutal, sophisticated
premier, Chou En-lai. Then he launched a Terror, the “Cultural
Revolution”, in which he attacked the party and the state using
gangs of students, secret-policemen and thugs to humiliate,
murder, destroy lives and culture, a nightmare that Jung Chang
experienced and recounted in Wild Swans: another 3m were killed
between 1966 and 1976. 

The ageing Mao fell out with Lin Piao, his chosen successor, the
creator of the Little Red Book, who died fleeing in 1971. The
authors found Mao’s orders that denied his veteran premier Chou
En-lai medical treatment for cancer — to ensure Chou would not
outlive him. This left Mao with his grotesque, vicious wife,
Chiang Ching (whom he loathed), the leader of the Gang of Four,
whom Mao used to enforce the Cultural Revolution. Having fallen
out with Moscow, Mao pulled off one final coup: Richard Nixon
visited China. But Mao was disappointed: America would not
intervene against Russia. Dying, he restored, then again purged
the talented, formidable Deng Xiao-ping, who outmanoeuvred the
Gang and Mao and started reversing Maoist insanity. Mao died in
1976 and is still worshipped in China. 

DEATH MARCH 

One of the authors’ charges against Mao is incompetence. For
instance, on the Great March Mao failed for months in 1935 to
make an obvious move into Sichuan. The blunder, claim Chang and
Halliday, cost 30,000 men — half his entire force. 

Available at the Sunday Times Books First price of £20 plus
£2.25 p on 0870 165 8585 

READ ON... 

websites:
www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/mao.html
All about Mao   	 		

Copyright 2005                 Times Newspapers Ltd.
*****************************************************************
 8 Korea Herald: U.S.-North Korea in game of chicken   

> Editorial/Op-Ed   
        
Current debate on the North Korean nuclear issue focuses on when
North Korea will test its nuclear weapons and what the United
States and South Korea should do about it. Since the second
nuclear crisis began in 2002, the United States and North Korea
have been playing a kind of chicken game. In the Cold War
period, the United States and Soviet Union played such a game in
the context of a nuclear stalemate. In a chicken game two
opponents have four choices: clash; one swerves and the other
does not, and vice versa; or both swerve. In the tense nuclear
confrontation, the United States and Soviet Union both swerved
to avoid a nuclear war, knowing both would lose if there was a
clash.

 In today's chicken game, North Korea is not militarily equal to
the United States, but it acts like a nuclear power and the
United States treasts it as if it were. If the U.S.-Soviet
confrontation was called a nuclear chicken game, the U.S.-North
Korean confrontation can be called a diplomatic chicken game.
What are the reasons for this? 

Theoretically, the United States can give North Korea an
ultimatum on its nuclear program: if the North does not abandon
its nuclear program by a certain date, the United States will
destroy all the nuclear facilities. The United States, however,
has not done this. There can be at least four reasons. 

First, domestic and international opinions are against the use of 
force because of the view that the United States has been 
bullying small powers too much since the Cold War ended and it 
has not yet convincingly proven that North Korea has nuclear 
capabilities and therefore there is still time for a negotiated 
settlement. 

Secondly, North Korea has not crossed the red line yet. The 
United States has so far not declared any kind of red line. 
Perhaps, it wants to keep it ambiguous intentionally.

Third, it is afraid that the repercussions from a military 
solution would be too great to bear. North Korea may launch an 
attack on South Korea; China will become more antagonistic; U.S. 
allies and friends will turn against it, etc. 

Fourth, China, Russia and even South Korea are yet to be 
convinced that the U.S. negotiating position is completely 
justifiable. China seems to think that North Korea is yet to 
develop the capabilities to explode effectively and launch 
nuclear bombs even if it possesses a few nuclear bombs and that 
it is willing to give up its nuclear program if its demands are 
met. 

China also thinks the preservation of the present North Korean 
regime is desirable for its national interests and peace in 
Northeast Asia. South Korea is more sympathetic toward the 
Chinese position than the U.S. position. 

It is naturally much more worried about a clash between the 
United States and North Korea than any other country. 

The United States asks China to play a proactive role in the 
nuclear crisis, saying China has the same stake as the United 
States on this issue and it has stronger leverage with the North 
than any other country. 

But China does not want to aggravate its relations with North 
Korea by pressuring the latter to make concessions because, if it 
does, it will lose its leverage with both the United States and 
the North. Instead, China urges South Korea to play the role, 
maintaining that it has better leverage with the United States 
and North Korea, because the United States values the U.S.-South 
Korea military alliance as much as South Korea does, and the 
North needs the South to gain economic aid and a more sympathetic 
hearing in the nuclear negotiations.

 Both the United States and North Korea know these facts, and 
therefore the United States treats the North as "a little giant" 
and the North acts like a giant. In this chicken game the best 
solution for North Korea is that the United States swerves and 
accepts North Korea's demands; the best solution for the United 
States is for the North to swerve and accept American demands. 
But neither side will swerve because their stakes are too high. 
The worst solution for both is that both take a collision course 
and clash. Both have to pay high prices: recognition of North 
Korea as a nuclear power for the United States, and a severe 
threat to its own existence for North Korea. The most realistic 
alternative - neither the best nor the worst one - is that both 
swerve and gain a little and lose a little.

 First, the United States and North Korea stop the verbal war: 
the former should tell the latter, through the diplomatic channel 
in New York, that it will not denigrate Kim Jong-il any more and 
will not attempt to change the North Korean regime. On the other 
hand, North Korea should not insist on its principle of 
negotiations for the fourth round of the six-party talks before 
they open - simultaneous action and sequential execution. These 
actions by both sides are needed to resume the talks.

 Second, within the framework of the six-party talks, bilateral 
discussions between the United States and North Korea should be 
held. This kind of two-tiered negotiation was effectively 
utilized in the U.S.-Vietnam peace talks in Paris in 1972. The 
United States has accepted

 Continued on Page 7

Park Sang-seek is rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace
Studies, Kyung Hee University. - Ed.

2005.05.30
 
*****************************************************************
 9 Korea: Digital Chosunilbo: Newspaper Smells U.S. Moves to Isolate N.Korea
 
  >     Updated May.29,2005 20:48 KST   
 
U.S. Deployment of Stealth Fighters a Prelude to War: KCNA
 U.S. to Send Stealth Bombers to Korea
 U.S. 'Ready for Permanent Talks Boycott by N.Korea'
   
The abrupt suspension of operations to retrieve the remains of
U.S. soldiers missing in action in North Korea was part of an
attempt by the Bush administration to further isolate the
Pyongyang regime, the Los Angeles Times said Saturday, as was
the firing of the head of the Korean Peninsula Energy
Development Organization (KEDO). 

L. Gordon Flake, a North Korea expert and head of the Mansfield
Center for Pacific Affairs in Washington, told the paper a
series of recent steps by the U.S. government were signs that
Washington was "gearing up for the next phase" now that it
appears unlikely Pyongyang will return to the six-party talks on
its nuclear program. The article titled ¡°U.S. May Be Trying to
Isolate N. Korea¡± also quoted an unnamed former State
Department official as saying suspension of the search for
remains was an effort to increase pressure on the Stalinist
country. 

KEDO, a U.S.-led international consortium formed to implement a
nuclear deal with North Korea, on Tuesday decided not to renew
the contract of its executive director Charles Kartman, who had
been a strong proponent of discussions with the North. 

(Heo Yong-beom, heo@chosun.com ) 

*****************************************************************
 10 Guardian Unlimited: Cheney: China Key to Ending N. Korea Nukes
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
 	 
	Sunday May 29, 2005 6:46 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney said the United
States is relying on China to persuade North Korea to end its
nuclear weapons program, despite Beijing's reluctance to exert
pressure on its neighbor. 

Talks involving China, the United States, Russia, Japan and
South Korea have been sidelined for nearly a year, even as North
Korea says it is building atomic bombs. Cheney said China could
have a big impact on reviving the stalled talks because it
shares North Korea's longest border and is its chief trading
partner. 

``The Chinese need to understand that it's incumbent upon them
to be major players here,'' Cheney said in a taped interview
with CNN's ``Larry King Live'' scheduled to air Monday night. 

Chinese officials have said they do not want to impose sanctions
or other economic pressure on North Korea because they don't
believe they would be effective. They have said they prefer to
resolve the dispute through continuing dialogue. 

Cheney said the nations involved in the six-party talks are
trying to make North Korea understand that they will cut off
relationships with the outside world, including trade, if they
do not end nuclear ambitions. But he acknowledged they have had
trouble making the case. 

``To date, you know, those talks have not produced much,''
Cheney said in excerpts of the interview released by CNN.
``We're continuing to work it very hard.'' 

Cheney said North Korea is ``a major problem.'' He described
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as ``one of the world's most
irresponsible leaders,'' who runs a police state and leaves his
people in poverty and malnutrition. 

``And he obviously wants to throw his weight around and become a
nuclear power,'' Cheney said. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 11 Japan Times: U.S. author pushes alternative energy

  Sunday, May 29, 2005   

SMALLER IS BETTER

 By ERIKO ARITA
 Staff writer

 Japan should promote small-scale power generation systems based 
on renewable energy, which are more economical, safe and 
environmentally friendly than huge nuclear and thermal power 
plants, according to an American energy expert.

  [News photo]   
  Amory B. Lovins, chief executive officer of the Rocky Mountain
Institute in Colorado, gives an interview in Tokyo.   

Amory B. Lovins, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Rocky
Mountain Institute in Colorado, said Japan's huge and diverse
potential in renewable energy can be developed to the point of
meeting all of the country's energy needs.

 Speaking at a lecture in Tokyo last week, Lovins also said
Japan should actively use its world-leading technology in solar
power and fuel cells to develop advanced renewable power systems.

 The physicist's NPO conducts research and consultation on the
use of natural energy resources.

 In Japan, thermal power plants supplied 63 percent of all
electricity generated in fiscal 2003, while nuclear power plants
generated 26 percent, according to the government.

 Power from such renewable sources as solar and wind accounted
for only 0.5 percent. 

Lovins recently visited Japan to give lectures and consultations
on energy systems to several companies and to promote the
Japanese translation of his book, "Small is Profitable: The
Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the
Right Size," which went on sale here earlier this month. The
original version was published in 2002.

 In the book, Lovins explains that building small power stations
based on renewable energy in numerous cities and towns is more
beneficial than operating huge nuclear and thermal power plants
in rural areas that transmit electricity to distant areas.

 He said small-scale systems which supply electricity in nearby
areas are inexpensive to construct and operate when compared
with large power systems, which require a lot of money to
operate plants and maintain facilities, including power lines,
to transmit power to remote areas.

 As an example, Lovins referred to a rooftop solar system
installed at the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California,
in 2002.

 Solar panels cover the facility's 12,140 sq. meters of roof
area and generate 1.46 gigawatt hours of electricity a year,
resulting in a savings of $15 million over 25 years in
combination with the facility's efficient lighting and
air-conditioning systems, according to Lovins.

 "The sun is distributed free to everybody every day very
reliably," he said.

 Major Japanese power companies say renewable energy is
unreliable because output changes in accordance with the weather.

 But Lovins said combining various kinds of renewable power
systems can back each other up.

 "If you continue to gather a third of all your electricity in
Japan from nuclear plants, this puts you in a very difficult
position, because you may want to shut down your nuclear plants
(for safety reasons) but are not able to," he said. 

The Japan Times: May 29, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 

*****************************************************************
 12 The Day: DEP Gives Sub Base Fresh Look Experts tour facility 
in effort to determine costs of cleanup

TheDay.com, New London, CT
 		 		 		
Sunday, May 29, 2005   								   									 										
 					   				 				

  I don't know how they estimated the cleanup and closure costs. 
There is an obligation on the part of the military to leave that 
property in a condition that's suitable for redevelopment (if 
closure recommendation is approved). The military got that land 
in a pristine state. State DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy
  
    
By JUDY BENSON Health/Science/Environment Reporter Published on 
5/28/2005

Groton  A team of state Department of Environmental Protection 
experts and DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy toured the Naval 
Submarine Base Friday afternoon and met with the Navy officials 
in charge of the cleanup of the toxic waste sites on the base. 

McCarthy, during an interview after the tour, said the visit was 
arranged to help her and her staff determine how much cleanup 
remains, what additional information the DEP needs to develop an 
accurate assessment of the costs, and what condition the 687-acre 
property should be left in if the base were to close.

 She requested the tour as part of the state's efforts to develop 
arguments to overturn a Defense Department decision, announced 
two weeks ago, to close the base by 2011. State and local 
officials working to save the base from closure contend that the 
cost of closing the base and completing the cleanup is much 
higher than the Navy has estimated, and that in the end the Navy 
would not save money. Town Mayor Harry A. Watson Jr., who is part 
of save-the-base efforts, joined the tour.

 About $56.5 million has been spent by the Navy thus far to 
remediate hazardous waste dumped at the site during its 100-year 
history as a military installation. The Navy has estimated the 
cost of the remaining cleanup at $23.9 million. The federal 
Environmental Protection Agency named the site to its Superfund 
list of the nation's most polluted sites in 1990. McCarthy noted 
that the federal government's original cleanup estimates at that 
time were about $110 million, about $30 million higher than the 
sum of the funds already spent plus the estimate for the 
remaining work. 

While DEP staff have been keeping tabs on the cleanup work and 
visiting the base regularly since the Superfund designation, 
McCarthy said, the possible closure of the base changes 
everything. 

What we're doing now is significantly different from before, 
she said. We're looking at this with fresh eyes. What would this 
be if this were not an active base? How clean is clean?

 She emphasized that the DEP wants to be certain it knows about 
all the contamination on the base, and how various buildings and 
different parts of the property have been used over the years. 

It's our job not to leave any unknowns, she said. One hundred 
years is a long time to operate an industrial site.

 Dozens of studies, reports and recommendations have been written 
since 1990 about the various contaminated areas of the base and 
how they should be cleaned up. While much information exists, 
McCarthy said, there are gaps. 

Some of the remediated sites have been cleaned to a so-called 
industrial standard, which presumes the property would remain 
an active submarine base. Under that standard, some toxic 
chemicals are allowed to remain in soils under a pavement cap, 
provided the areas are monitored to ensure the pavement hasn't 
cracked, that the contaminants aren't migrating through the 
groundwater and that the health of base personnel isn't being 
harmed.

 McCarthy said those standards work for an active Naval base, but 
that a higher standard would probably have to be applied for 
reuse that may require removal of the pavement caps and the 
contaminated soils. That could make the property, located on the 
Thames River waterfront, suitable for residential or recreational 
use. 

McCarthy said she also wants to ensure that the Navy factors in 
the demolition of old, unusable buildings on the base when it 
calculates estimates of the cost of closing the facility. 

We tried to talk to them about the abandoned buildings on the 
property, she said. There are old buildings with asbestos and 
lead paint. We don't want them to leave those buildings. There 
are some turn-of-the-century buildings along the Thames that are 
slated for demolition, and we need to make sure that work doesn't 
stop.

 DEP staff are preparing a letter to the Navy listing all the 
information they need to develop their own estimates of the 
closure and remaining cleanup costs. McCarthy said the short time 
frame between the announcement that the base is slated for 
closure and the end of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment 
Commission (BRAC) process in December presents the DEP with a 
major challenge in gathering and analyzing all the information it 
needs in time. 

I don't know how they estimated the cleanup and closure costs, 
she said of the Defense Department's figures. There is an 
obligation on the part of the military to leave that property in 
a condition that's suitable for redevelopment (if closure 
recommendation is approved). The military got that land in a 
pristine state. 

McCarthy, who became the state DEP commissioner last year, said 
she will draw on her past experiences at her previous job in 
Massachusetts with three base closures in that state. At least 
two of the three were, like the Groton base, Superfund sites. 

One of her main concerns, she said, is the size of the Defense 
Department's budget for cleaning up the approximately 120 
military installations that have been named Superfund sites. 
Those that remain active bases, she said, are the military's 
priority for its shrinking cleanup budget. Once bases are closed, 
however, they can fall much lower on the list and the pace of 
cleanup can slow dramatically. That's another reason that the 
state must now put intensive focus on the remaining remediation 
needed at the base, McCarthy said. Delays in environmental 
cleanups can delay transfer of the property for reuse. Such 
delays have occurred at many closed bases around the country.

 The military doesn't have a tremendously large cleanup budget, 
she said. 

The budget for cleanup projects has been declining in recent 
years, and now stands at about $3 billion annually. While the EPA 
determines which sites are on the Superfund list, cleanup costs 
at military sites are borne by the military, not the EPA.

 One of the main areas she has directed her staff to examine 
carefully is the groundwater throughout the base. Remediation of 
the groundwater, which has been classified as not drinkable due 
to contamination, has not begun. It appears that all the 
groundwater on the base flows into the Thames River, and it is 
not used as a drinking water source on the base or for nearby 
homes, which were connected to public water supplies in the 
1990s. McCarthy said she wants her staff to make sure there are 
no domestic wells supplied by base groundwater. Her staff must 
also determine a reasonable standard for the groundwater to 
protect the Thames River, she said.

 River sediments near the base also need more testing for 
contamination levels and to determine how they should be 
remediated, McCarthy said. High levels of lead are among the 
known toxins in the sediments. The lower base near the waterfront 
also requires more testing, but because that is the most heavily 
used part of the property, that has been difficult. McCarthy said 
her office is working with the Navy to develop access plans for 
the lower base.

 Her additional concerns include: 

"Perchlorate. A component of explosives, recent studies have 
determined that it is highly toxic to human health if it enters 
the drinking water supply. Sub base officials told McCarthy that 
tests have shown little or no perchlorate contamination, but 
McCarthy said she is not convinced that the investigations went 
far enough. The chemical was not on the EPA's original list of 
substances the Navy was directed to test for when the base was 
named to the Superfund list.

 "Ash from medical waste from the former base hospital. The ash 
was buried on the site. Medical waste often contains mercury, a 
known toxin, McCarthy noted. 

"Pesticides in the soils on the base golf course. 

"Petroleum wastes. State regulations call for the removal of 
petroleum-laden soils. 

Now is the time to be proactive, McCarthy said. 

[The Day Publishing Co.] About The Day Publishing Company 
*****************************************************************
 13 DAWN: US willing to use N-arms

Top Stories; May 29, 2005
 
By Masood Haider

 UNITED NATIONS, May 28: Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations
Javad Zarif said on Friday that US threat to Iran’s nuclear
programme were a “smoke screen to divert attention from its
violations” that included a US willingness “to use nuclear
weapons against non-nuclear weapon states.”

 Talking to reporters following the failure of Nuclear
Non-Proliferation review conference here Mr Zarif said the
United States never intended to scrap its nuclear arsenal,
despite promising to eventually disarm when it signed the 1970
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the landmark arms control pact.

 Iran’s chief delegate asserted that Israel, which is widely
believed to have nuclear weapons, was the threat to the Middle
East region. “There is unanimity on the threat that is posed not
only by Israeli nuclear weapons but by its aggressive policy”,
he said. “Israel is the threat to the region,” he said. “It is
one of the great ironies of our age that a country outside the
framework of legality in the area of non-proliferation is one of
the countries that is the most active participants against
Iran,” he said.

 In his address to the delegates at the NPT conference earlier
Mr Zarif said the greatest threat to global security was from
the countries that already have nuclear weapons.

Contributions Privacy Policy

                © DAWN Group of Newspapers, 2005 
*****************************************************************
 14 Hankyoreh: [Editorial] Confusing US Actions at a Sensitive Time 

Updated : May.30.2005 06:40 KST

It is causing concern that at a time when North Korea will be
making its final decision about the nuclear issue and whether to 
participate in the six-party talks, the United States continues 
to make moves that could negatively influence the way the 
situation unfolds. Examples would be how the US has suddenly 
stopped searching for the remains of American soldiers lost in 
the Korean War and has decided to station stealth bombers in 
Korea, and because US officials are raising the level of the 
rhetoric by saying the US is preparing strategies for what it 
will do should the six-party talks fall apart. It is pressuring 
the North to decide to give up its nuclear program, but it risks 
increasing the tension on the Korean peninsula if the North gets 
upset and calls the pressure a military threat. 

Of course it is too early to tell what will happen, as those
within the Bush Administration who support dialogue continue to
try to get North Korea back to the talks and because the North
is finalizing its position after having heard the Bush
Administration's intentions through the "New York channel." But
it goes without saying that the confusing messages and
provocative rhetoric coming from the US side is going to have a
negative effect on the North's decision about returning to the
talks. 

North and South Korea have decided that the South will send a
government delegation to Pyongyang for an event marking the
fifth anniversary of the intra-Korean summit, and dialogue
between the two has been restored after eight months with a
decision to hold ministerial-level talks in Seoul. The
resumption of intra-Korean dialogue will clearly play a positive
role in creating a mood favorable for resolving the nuclear
issue. The US-Korea summit scheduled for November in Washington
will determine the larger framework for solving the issue. 

We strongly caution against hard-liners in the US provoking the
North or creating reasons for avoiding dialogue at such a
sensitive time. Our government must do all it can diplomatically
to prevent that from happening. We call on the North to delay no
longer and explain its position at the six-party talks. 

The Hankyoreh, 30 May 2005. 

*****************************************************************
 15 Daily Yomiuri: Energy security must be improved
 
The Yomiuri Shimbun 

Japan's energy self-sufficiency rate --the ratio of energy the
nation secures solely at home--currently stands at only 4
percent, with hydroelectric power generation as the main source
of energy. This exceedingly low figure stands in stark contrast
to the ratio of self-sufficiency in food, which amounts to 40
percent. 

The Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry's energy white paper
for this year focuses on the nation's energy security. Since
last year, crude oil prices have risen sharply, mainly as a
result of increased demand in Asia, including China and India.
It appears the current tight relationship between oil supply and
demand will remain unchanged for some time. This likely will
further increase the need for Japan to secure energy. 

This country's energy-sufficiency rate still remains at a modest
19 percent if its water-power and other domestically produced
energy is combined with its nuclear power generation. Japan's
nuclear power is considered semi-domestically produced energy. 

Although it exceeds the ratio of 15 percent in Italy, the figure
falls far below the ratios of 73 percent in the United States,
51 percent in France and 39 percent in Germany. Given these
figures, the nation's energy situation is its Achilles heel. 

Japan can afford to remain indifferent to its own disadvantage
in energy security if it can buy abundant energy at stable
prices. However, such a favorable energy situation is a thing of
the past. 

=== 

Mounting prices 



This can be seen in the import prices of major types of energy.
With the January 2002 figures as an index of 100, uranium stood
at 219 on a U.S. dollar basis in January 2005, crude oil at 199,
power station coal at 148, and liquefied natural gas at 130.
This means that the prices of not only crude oil but all other
major energy sources have sharply risen. 

According to the white paper, the skyrocketing prices can be
attributed to a less-than-satisfactory level of investment in
energy development due to a decrease in the prices of energy
sources during the 1980s, combined with the tight supply-demand
relationship resulting from the surge in energy consumption in
Asia. The white paper goes on to say that the situation has been
exacerbated by negative factors such as political instability in
the Middle East, an accident at a uranium mine in Canada and an
influx of speculative funds. 

If all energy consumption in Asia is converted into oil
consumption, the figure stood at 740 million tons in 1971, the
eve of the first energy crisis. The figure shot up to 2.77
billion tons, accounting for 29 percent of the world's total
energy consumption, up from 14 percent. According to an
estimate, the figure is expected to increase to 5.97 billion
tons in 2030, mainly because of increases in China. 

=== 

Regional energy security 

Japan should urge other Asian countries to boost their oil
stocks as soon as possible. This is important to ensure Asian
nations secure a stable supply for the future. Doing so would
enable Asian countries to curb a surge in petroleum prices if
the energy situation worsens, instead of flocking to
oil-producing nations to continue purchases. 

It is also important for Japan to impart its advanced
energy-saving technology to other Asian economies. 

In recent years, Japan and China have been bitterly at odds over
natural resources in the East China Sea. The government should
not compromise its basic stand on the issue. However, Japan
would be wise to cooperate with China in areas of mutual
interest, including the development of energy-saving technology.
It would benefit Japan to help China correct its tendency to
waste national resources. 

This must be complemented by efforts to promote nuclear power
generation at home in a safe and steady manner. The government
should also seek to increase the utilization ratio of domestic
nuclear power plants. 

The surge in uranium prices could be effectively countered by
reusing spent nuclear fuel. Further delay should not be
permitted in developing a fast-breeder reactor that could most
efficiently burn uranium. 

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, May 30)   

Copyright 2005 The Yomiuri Shimbun 
*****************************************************************
 16 BBC: ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1998: World fury at Pakistan's nuclear tests
    
Pakistan has exploded five underground nuclear devices in
response to India's nuclear tests two weeks ago. 

The move has provoked worldwide condemnation and fears of a
nuclear conflict in one of the world's most volatile regions. 

We never wanted to participate in this nuclear race

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's Prime Minister
 			 			   		 		 		
Pakistani officials said the devices were detonated underground 
at 1030GMT in the Baluchistan region near the border with 
Afghanistan. 

Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif addressed the
nation on television and said the five tests by India had made
the action "inevitable". 

"Today's day is history in the making," he said. "Today God has
given us the opportunity to take this step for our country's
defence which is inevitable. We never wanted to participate in
this nuclear race. We have proved to the world that we would not
accept what was dictated to us." 

Popular support

 The prime minister said Pakistan's response was fully supported
by its people and attacked the international community for a
weak response to India's tests. 

But after his national address, he said he was ready for more
talks with India on a non-aggression pact. 

There was uproar in the Indian parliament when the news was
announced. The Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, said
Pakistan's action vindicated India's decision to conduct tests
of its own. 

The western nations were quick to condemn Pakistan's action. US
President Bill Clinton said Pakistan had missed "a truly
priceless opportunity" by not showing restraint. He said
Pakistan would now face sanctions. 

Nato said the tests were a "dangerous development" and also
warned of sanctions. 

Ever since the partition of the sub-continent in 1947, when
Britain dismantled its Indian empire, India and Pakistan have
been arch rivals. The animosity has its roots in religion and
history, and is epitomised by the long-running conflict over the
state of Jammu and Kashmir. 

Now they have not only entered a new nuclear arms race but
expanded the club of nuclear powers across the globe which
includes the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, North Korea and
Israel. 

Optimists hope India and Pakistan's nuclear parity will now lead
to serious and constructive peace talks. 

  In Context   		 		 		 			
   			 				 				 	In February 1999 relations between the two
Asian rivals eased after they signed the Lahore accord pledging
to "resolve all issues" including that of the disputed regions
of Jammu and Kashmir. 

But conflict broke out just three months later when India
launched air strikes on Pakistani-backed forces that had
infiltrated Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan insisted those
forces were in fact "freedom fighters" demanding their own
state. 

The ensuing military build-up in the region led at least 30,000
people to flee their homes. 

Under US pressure, Pakistan ordered the infiltrators out of the
region. 

October 1999 saw a military coup in Pakistan with General Pervez
Musharraf taking power. 

In 2002 Pakistan and India came close to all-out war but talks
between the countries' two leaders in January 2004 led to hopes
of peace. 
			 			   		 		 		
  ©MMV | News Sources | Privacy &amp; Cookies Policy
*****************************************************************
 17 Bellona: Canada can manage reconstruction of ”nuclear” bridge in Severodvinsk
 
Canada will apply for a grant from the European Bank of
Reconstruction and Development to repair the bridge used to ship
spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste from Zvezdochka shipyard in
Severodvinsk. 

2005-05-27 19:47

Canada is ready to work closely to solve the problem of Yagra
bridge over Severnaya Dvina River connecting Yagry Island, where
nuclear submarines are being dismantled, with mainland in
Severodvinsk. In particular, Canada will ask the European Bank
of Reconstruction and Development to give a grant for the bridge
reconstruction from the Northern Dimension Environmental
Partnership. Canada also stated that it’s ready to manage this
project, Interfax reported with the reference to the Canadian
ambassador’s speech in Severodvinsk. 

The source in Severodvinsk administration said the bridge is
called ”nuclear” as the trains shipping out the spent nuclear
fuel from Zvezdochka shipyard to Mayak plant in the South Ural,
use it. The bridge was not originally designed for heavy trains
loaded with spent nuclear fuel and the grant from the EBRD could
help to solve this problem within one year. It is also planned
to build a new bridge 12 meters away from the existing one and
use it exclusively for the trains in the future. The old bridge
will be repaired and the road for cars will become from 7 to 9
meters wider. This project costs about $15m and can take 30
months. The specialists guarantee nuclear and environmental
safety of the bridge, Interfax reported. 
  
  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 18 Bellona: Rosatom: it’s expedient to dismantle RTGs at Mayak
 
Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), the bulk of which
are used as power sources for lighthouses along Russia’s
northern sea-coast, should be dismantled at the Mayak Chemical
combine, says a proposal by Rosatom published on their official
Web site (www.minatom.ru). 

  Removal of the RTG radioactive core. Currently, all RTGs are
dismantled in Moscow at the Institute for Technical Physics and
Automatisation, which developed and produced RTGs during Soviet
times.   
  Office of the County Governor of Finnmark   

Rashid Alimov, 2005-05-27 14:58

The Web site released this view in an article about a recent
international seminar on RTG decommissioning held at the
Kurchatov Institute. 

The Soviet Union produced about 1 500 RTGs. The engineered life
span of all of these generators, which have a highly active
strontium-90 cores, has long ago been surpassed. But the
continual incidents, involving RTGs,—including the recent
mishaps, when two generators were damaged falling from a
helicopter on the Arctic Zemlya Bunge island—suggest that the
problem is not receiving attention it deserves. 

Most RTGs are owned by the Russian Ministries of Defence and
Transportation, while some belong to the Ministry of Natural
Resources and Russian hydro-meteorological service.

  Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators   
  
  Bellona's updated working paper: all most recent incidents
involving RTGs in one table, new international efforts and plans
for RTGs decommissioning.

Currently, RTGs are dismantled in Moscow at the Institute for
Technical Physics and Automatisation, which developed and
produced RTGs during Soviet times. After dismantling, the
generator core—which are the capsule-form radioactive heat
sources containing strontium (RHS-90)—are dumped at the Mayak
combine in Chelyabinsk region. 

“Taking into consideration that the withdrawal rate of the RTGs
is going to increase, an acute necessity emerged to find an
additional or alternative variant for their dismantling. It
looks like it’s Mayak which is expedient for RTGs dismantling,”
reads the statement from Russia’s Rosatom. 

The participants of the seminar at the Kurchatov Institute
—representing Germany, Denmark, Canada, Norway, Russia, the
United States, France and the NEFCO international
organization—agreed to consider a variant to speed-up the
decommissioning, which stipulates RTGs would be dismantled at
Mayak at the rate 100 per year. It was also announced that the
wish to participate in equipping this dismantlement point at
Mayak—called a hot chamber—was expressed by the German
representatives. 

According to Rosatom, in case the decision would be positive,
the decommissioning of all Russia’s RTGs with dumping all the
RHS-90’s would be finished not in 2011, as it is planned, but
two years ahead of the schedule. 

Currently, Mayak is under an investigation by the Chelyabinsk
regional prosecutors’ office, which launched a criminal case on
radioactive contamination, defined by the article 246 of the
Russian Criminal Code as a”Violation of the environmental
protection rules while carrying out operations.” The
investigation invited as witnesses representatives of
non-governmental organizations, Nadezhda Kutepova, of
Chelyabink’s Planet of Hopes and Vladimir Slivyak of Ecodefense!
in Moscow. 

Meanwhile, in March, also on the Rosatom web-site, the deputy
head of Rosatom, Sergey Antipov, claimed that a hot chamber is
planned to be build with the assistance of the US Department of
Energy at DalRAO, near the nuclear submarine base in
Vilyuchinsk, Kamchatka. The goal was the same: To not send RTGs
to Moscow and back. The dumping and vitrification was also
planned to be carried out at Mayak. 

Building of an interim storage facility for RTGs taken from
different sites in Russia's Far East has been already started at
DalRAO with DOE funds. 

“And if a hot chamber built there, we are able to dismantle
[RTGs] there,” said Sergei Antipov, mentioning that with
long-standing help from Norway, and new-found support from the
United States, Russia has removed and decommissioned some 200 of
about 920 RTGs.

Even earlier, in negotiations with American and German
colleagues, Minatom mentioned a variant according to which the
contents of RTGs would be stored in regional “Radon” dump-sites.
For example, a plan is under discussion to build a long-term
storage for RTGs in the Siberian region in a territory of one or
several “Radon” facilities. But Radon combines are designed only
for handling low-and medium-level radioactive waste, while RTGs
pertain to high-level waste. 

Most Russian RTGs are completely unprotected against potential
thieves or intruders, and lack even minimal security measures
like fences or even radioactive hazard signs. Nuclear inspectors
visit these sites as seldom as once every six months, and some
RTGs have not been checked for more than a decade. 

The biggest danger coming from these unprotected RTGs is their
availability to terrorists, who can use the radioactive
materials contained in them to make so-called "dirty bombs"
—bombs that are triggered by standard explosives, but which
disperse radioactivity. The damage from such an explosion could
surpass by many times that from a conventional bomb, at the
ground zero area—potentially dozens of kilometers depending on
the power of the explosives dispersing the radiation—with
remaining radioactively contaminating the area for years to
come. 

  An RTG under a helicopter transportation.   
  NRPA/Office of the County Governor of Finnmark   

The most recent incident and international help

 The most recent known RTG accident occurred when two RTGs were
being dismantled on September 10th 2004, but no information was
released about it until four months later—even though
substantial gamma radiation was measured above the accident
site. The two RTGs—Nos. 4 and 5 of the “Efir-MA” model produced
in 1982—were being transported from the “New Siberia” island
lighthouse off the Northeastern arctic coast of Siberia. 

They were suspended from a helicopter by cables for transport to
the Russian polar station at Bunge. When the helicopter ran into
heavy weather the crew was forced to jettison the two RTGs from
a height of 50 meters on the tundra at Zemlya Bunge island, 112
kilometres from another Russian polar station, Sannikova. They
have not yet been recovered. 

According to information eventually released by Russia’s Federal
Service for Energy, Technology and Atomic Oversight (FSETAN in
its Russian abbreviation), the impact compromised the RTGs’
external radiation shielding. At a height of 10 metres above the
impact site at Zemlya Bunge island, the intensity of gamma
radiation was measured at 4 milliSieverts per hour. 

Questions have been raised as to whether any of the newly-found
US funding financed this misadventure. Bryan Wilkes, spokesman
for the National Nuclear Security Administration for the
DOE—which manages the DOE’s nuclear remediation efforts—said at
the time in an interview with Bellona Web that he was unaware of
the September mishap, adding that the DOE had tighter controls
over how its money was spent and the criteria that govern that
spending. 

The question of how the funds of donor-countries geared toward
helping Russia with the decommissioning of different nuclear
objects, including RTGs, was discussed at the international
seminar in the Kurchatov Institute. 

“It should be mentioned, the seminar was not so easy both in its
format and in its course,” commented Sergei Antipov on the
Rosatom web-site.

  Russian, European officials optimistic about Russian nuclear
‘Master Plan’   

  A Bellona web article on nuclear master plan for Russia.
&nbsp;Read on &raquo;   

“Regretfully, such places, where donors don’t see their
participation and their help, exist. And there we are left to
face the problem alone. But I hope that when we show the donors
the full picture of RTGs condition, their position may begin to
change,” he added and proposed elaborating an RTGs
decommissioning Mater Plan akin to the recently published
master-plan on decommissioning of the nuclear submarines and
several other objects in Northwest Russia. 

Such a mater plan should stipulate all the priority measures,
and what works are funded by each donor-country. 

  Record of the CEG workshop   

  Security and Safety of Radioactive Sources: Decommissioning
and Replacement of RTG. 16-18 February 2005, Oslo, Norway

Earlier, at the RTGs decommissioning workshop in Oslo in
February 2005, the Contact Expert Group (CEG) of the
International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA), defined this
problem thusly: "The workshop recognises the great importance of
the exchange of information on a regular basis between all
parties involved in order to eliminate duplication of efforts
and overlaps."

Actually, the words "duplication and overlaps" coyly mean the
lack of transparency in spending funds in Rosatom leading to the
situation, wherein the same work is paid for twice, or even more
from different sources.

The seminar at the Kurchatov institute also "proposed [that] in
order to eliminate duplication and overlaps in the funding of
the work on RTG decommissioning, to assign fields of activities
to the donor countries (according to the geographical principle
or to the fields of activities)."

It was also mentioned that none of the donors claimed the
intention of carrying out and maintaining operations on RTG
decommissioning in the Western and the Eastern parts of the
Northern Shipping Route, as well as on the mainland, "so that
these regions are still out of cooperation".

  Audit of Minatom reveals millions in misspent cash and lack of
control on sub decommissioning   
  
  Between the years 2002 and 2003, Russia's Ministry of Atomic
Energy, or Minatom, misappropriated several million dollars in
submarine decommissioning funding to cover costs of naval spent
nuclear fuel reprocessing, and sold off $3.9m of scrap metal
from the vessels that, by law, should have been pumped into the
federal budget, a report by Russia's highest governmental
auditing agency has revealed.

The lack of transparency in spending international support funds
has often been criticized, including in a report by Russia’s
Audit Chamber. The report, analyzing activities of Minatom (the
ministry, which was transformed into Rosatom in 2004) in 2002,
it was mentioned that the Western donors pay two times more for
the same decommissioning operations Russia carries out. 

Apart from financial abuses, the donors are anxious not to let
the funds, given to Russia as aid, to be the cause of the new
incidents. 

In 2003 Norway allotted money for decommissioning of two of
Victor-II class nuclear submarines. Almost simultaneously with
signing of this contract, another rusted-out Russian submarine,
the K-159, sank with 800 kilograms of uranium while being towed
to a dismatlement point on the Kola Penisula , killing nine of
the 10 crewmembers on-board. The fact that the Norwegian-funded
decommissioning of submarines stipulated the same dangerous
towing practice—which Bellona brought to light—forced the
Norwegian government reassess its policy toward Russian nuclear
clean-up projects.   

  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 19 RIA Novosti: MOSCOW BLACKOUT CAUSED NO EMERGENCIES IN NUCLEAR PROJECTS, 
REASSURES ROSATOM
 
MOSCOW, May 27 (RIA Novosti) - A huge power outage in Moscow,
last Wednesday, did not cause any emergencies in nuclear
projects within the jurisdiction of the Federal Nuclear Energy
Agency, or Rosatom, its Public Relations Center says in a
statement circulated today.

 The blackout of May 25 left certain parts of Russia without
electricity-but nuclear projects did not have whatever
emergencies. All are going on with their usual routine,
including the Physical Technical Institute, federal government
research center based in Obninsk near Moscow.

 The blackout did not make a sizeable impact on technological
processes in companies under Rosatom, or on their physical
protective facilities.

 There was no environment pollution, either, says the statement.

 Sergei Shoigu, Minister for Emergency and Calamity Relief, also
denies nuclear leakages in the Obninsk nuclear plant.

 Obninsk is in the Kaluga Region, to Moscow's southwest, and
neighboring on the Moscow Region. The blackout struck the Kaluga
Region, too, so the plant is under close monitoring. The latest
gages of all parameters at the plant and round it did not offer
any alarming results. Background radiation was absolutely
normal, within the annual average for many preceding years, the
minister said in a Rossia television company live cast.

 Victor Vdovenkov, chief of the Kaluga gubernatorial press
service, also denied nuclear leakages in Obninsk with the
blackout. He reminded, in a Novosti interview, that Obninsk
possessed not only a nuclear power plant but also two research
institutes, which used radioactive materials. There were no
emergencies in either institute, he emphatically said.
 
© 2005 "RIA Novosti"   
*****************************************************************
 20 RIA Novosti: NPT IS THE BASIS FOR MAINTAINING NUCLEAR WEAPONS NON-PROLIFERATION
 
MOSCOW, May 29 (RIA Novosti) - New challenges to 
non-proliferation can and must be eliminated on the basis of the 
Non-Proliferation Treaty in the first place, the Russian foreign 
ministry said following the 7th NPT Review Conference.

 "The conference participants could not reach a consensus and
adopt recommendations on ways of further strengthening of the
NPT. The spread of opinions on observance of the treaty
obligations on the part of its members was too wide," the
Foreign Ministry said in a statement. 

"At the same time, the main conclusion shared by all
participants is clear - new challenges to non-proliferation can
and must be eliminated primarily on the basis of the Non
Proliferation Treaty," the ministry added.

 According to the ministry, "for Russia, this treaty constitutes
an important component of the system of global security. In 35
years of its existence, it has proven its efficiency," used
primarily as a mechanism of preventing the proliferation of
nuclear weapons.

 "That is why the Russian delegation insisted during the review
conference on strengthening the NPT and uniting the efforts of
all its participants in accomplishing this task," the Foreign
Ministry said.

 "We are certain that based on the work at the Conference, we
can continue fulfilling all obligations envisioned by the treaty
and making all possible efforts to strengthen it," the foreign
ministry added. 

The conference concluded its work in New York on May 27.
Representatives from 152 NPT member-countries participated in
the conference. A hundred and twenty-nine intergovernmental and
non-governmental organizations attended the event as observers.
 
© 2005 "RIA Novosti"   
*****************************************************************
 21 Guardian Unlimited: Nuclear Treaty Failure Sets Tone for Summit
 
From the Associated Press        

[UP] 
	Saturday May 28, 2005 8:46 AM

By CHARLES J. HANLEY 

AP Special Correspondent 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The failure of a global nuclear conference
leaves it to President Bush and other world leaders to ``think
outside the box'' at a September summit and find new ways to
stem the spread of nuclear arms, U.N. officials say. 

After a month of sharp debate, the conference ended Friday with
a whimper: no consensus recommendations for strengthening the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the pact that has helped keep
the lid on doomsday arms since 1970. 

The failure comes at a time of mounting nuclear tensions around
the world. 

North Korea has pulled out of the treaty and says it is building
atom bombs. Iran's nuclear fuel program raises questions about
possible weapons plans. Arab states view Israel's nuclear
arsenal as increasingly provocative. The conference had futilely
debated proposals to address all these issues. 

Many delegates also were disturbed over Bush administration talk
of modernizing the U.S. nuclear force, and sought U.S.
reaffirmation of commitments made to disarmament steps at the
nonproliferation conferences of 1995 and 2000. 

As the meeting drew toward a close, however, the U.S.-led
Western group of nations blocked any mention of those past
commitments in the conference's thin final report. 

Delegates said they feared that the outcome - the most complete
failure at such nonproliferation conferences in 35 years - might
undermine faith in the treaty, a cornerstone of global arms
control. 

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan agreed, believing the
``inability to strengthen their collective efforts is bound to
weaken the treaty,'' his spokesman said. Annan said world
leaders should deal with the issues at a global summit scheduled
here for September. 

Mohamed ElBaradei, the U.N. nuclear agency chief, called the
summit ``a golden opportunity.'' 

``These are fundamental issues that ought to be addressed at the
highest policy level because they need an unconventional way of
thinking, thinking outside the box,'' he said in an interview
from his International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in
Vienna. 

One question needing ``urgent attention'' involves the nuclear
fuel cycle, he said. Iran's uranium-enrichment technology can
produce both fuel for peaceful nuclear energy and material for
bombs - and Washington contends weapons are what Tehran has in
mind. 

ElBaradei has proposed a five-year moratorium on establishment
of any new fuel-cycle facilities worldwide while plans are
developed for better controls, possibly even international
control of nuclear fuel production. It's a politically explosive
matter, however, since it involves commercial and government
nuclear programs of sovereign states. 

The failed conference was the latest of the twice-a-decade
gatherings of the members of the 188-nation nonproliferation
treaty, called to assess the treaty's workings and find ways to
improve them. 

Under the nuclear pact, states without atomic arms pledged not
to develop them, and five with the weapons - the United States,
Russia, Britain, France and China - undertook to eventually
eliminate their arsenals. The nonweapons states, meanwhile, were
guaranteed access to peaceful nuclear technology. 

Delegations here had proposed ideas, for example, for limiting
access to dual-use technology with bombmaking potential, along
with proposals to strengthen inspection of nuclear facilities
and to pressure nuclear-armed states to shrink their arsenals
more quickly. 

On treaty withdrawal, which North Korea managed without
consequence under the nonproliferation pact, some delegations
supported plans to make the process more difficult and
penalty-laden. 

But the dozens of proposals were stalled for more than two weeks
while delegations squabbled over the agenda. Then, when debate
finally started, it proved impossible to win consensus in
committees. 

Iran objected to any mention of it as a proliferation concern.
Egypt balked at toughening treaty withdrawal, since it wants
that option open as long as ex-enemy Israel has nuclear bombs.
And the United States fought every reference to its 1995 and
2000 commitments. 

Those commitments included, for example, activating the nuclear
test-ban treaty and negotiating a verifiable treaty to ban
production of bomb materials - both steps the Bush
administration opposes, but other weapons states support. 	 
		 	 	   
      Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 22 JTW Comment: Atomic Loopholes: Future Tense as Nuclear Treaty Stalls 

Turkish Weekly Test(Alpha) Edition:Hisar   

  Paul Reynolds   
  	 	 The failure by a review conference to strengthen the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is no surprise given the
competing interests and arguments. 	 	 

But it leaves the world even more uncertain as to how to stop
the spread of nuclear weapons on the one hand and to reduce
their numbers on the other. 

Two loopholes have not been closed. The first is that a member
state can, under inspection, legally develop fuel enrichment
technology to produce nuclear power. 

But that know-how can then be used to make a nuclear bomb and all 
the country concerned then has to do is to leave the treaty.                  

The second loophole is that leaving the treaty is virtually 
cost-free.               

Two countries demonstrate what can happen.              

Iran wants to develop the fuel cycle technology and efforts are
being made to stop it, given the mistrust that developed after
it hid its programme for nearly 20 years. It insists despite
this that its intentions are peaceful. 

North Korea has not only developed the expertise, it has left
the treaty and has announced that it has built a bomb. Several
in fact. 
	 	 
US strategy 	 	 	 	 

The deadlock means that the US will concentrate even more on
unilateral and multilateral measures outside the treaty to
counter future threats. 

It was significant that the opening statement from the US
delegate, Assistant Secretary for Arms Control Stephen
Rademaker, laid heavy emphasis on such measures.


"We have also had success in designing new tools outside of the
NPT that complement the treaty," he said.
Not long ago, the US put together the Proliferation Security
Initiative (PSI), in which more than 60 countries agreed to
monitor and if necessary to intervene against the illegal trade
in nuclear materials. 

The threat is seen to come not only from North Korea and
possibly Iran but also from clandestine groups like the AQ Khan
network, named after the Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold
his secrets around the world. 
                 
Accusations are already flying as to who is most to blame
for the conference's failure. 	 	 

The US is in the frame for some critics, who say it has turned
its back on a commitment at the last review meeting to negotiate
the elimination of nuclear weapons, has refused to ratify the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is planning to develop
so-called "mini-nukes" as bunker-busting bombs. 

The US and Russia are also accused of not reducing their 
strategic arsenals enough.               

Complacency                              


The Americans blame others for complacency in the face of North
Korea, which has openly proclaimed its development of nuclear
weapons, and Iran, which hid its enrichment programme for nearly
20 years. 

They argue that some of the most significant successes have come
independently of the treaty, notably when Libya gave up its
nuclear programme under pressure and the Khan network was rolled
up. 

As for working towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, the
US says that thousands of warheads have gone since the Cold War
and under its agreement with Russia, thousands more will soon be
gone, leaving around 2,000 active warheads on each side. 

The conference got bogged down on the usual issue that
bedevils any attempt to strengthen or reform the treaty - the
tension between those who have nuclear weapons and those who do
not. 

The basic deal in the treaty was that the haves would negotiate
towards eliminating their weapons and the have-nots would not
seek to acquire them, while being free to develop nuclear power
for peaceful purposes. 

The have-nots have always argued that until the haves are
serious about negotiating, then they should not be expected to
agree on tightening up methods of control. 

Thus, Egypt complained about the "laxity" of the nuclear powers
in negotiating reductions in arsenals and asked whether it would
therefore be "logical or even feasible" to expect the others to
negotiate additional controls. 

The NPT has been successful in stopping a flood of countries
from becoming nuclear powers. 	 	 

The two loopholes will be the subjects of further discussion but
given the failure at this conference, the hopes of a successful
outcome cannot be very high. And the next review conference is
not for another five years. 	 

Story from BBC NEWS:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/4588423.stm
   
  2005-05-28 12:34:19   

Journal of Turkish Weekly   
  
*****************************************************************
 23 Xinhua: G8 to set no timetable for reducing global warming   

  www.xinhuanet.com
    
  www.chinaview.cn 2005-05-28 19:45:50   

    LONDON, May 28 (Xinhuanet) -- The forthcoming 2005 summit of
the Group of Eight industrialized nations (G8) will not set a
timetable to reduce global warming, British newspaper The
Independent reported on Saturday. 

    The G8 summit will discuss the role of nuclear power in
reducing climate change, but it is not preparing to set new
targets or a timetable to cut global warming, the paper said,
citing a leaked draft communique on climate change for the G8
summit. 

    The paper, Draft G8 Climate Change and Sustainable Energy,
which outlines the key climate change issues for the G8 summit,
shows no new timetable for reducing carbon emissions or any
ambitious new targets for progress after 2012, said the paper. 

    According to the draft, talks about "cleaner" technologies
willinclude nuclear power, despite public opposition to
expanding the technology in Britain. 

    The draft says that the G8 summit, which is be held at
Gleneagles in Scotland from July 6-8, will end with a joint
statement on nuclear power. 

    In 2005, Britain becomes the presidency state of the G8, the
eight industrialized countries grouping Britain, France, Japan,
Germany, Italy, Canada, Russia and the United States. Enditem   

  Copyright ©2003 Xinhua News Agency. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 24 Herald Tribune: Kofi A. Annan: Break the nuclear deadlock
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 					 					 	
A. Annan International Herald Tribune
 						
MONDAY, MAY 30, 2005
 					   				 				
UNITED NATIONS, New York Regrettably, there are times when 
multilateral forums tend merely to reflect, rather than mend, 
deep rifts over how to confront the threats we face. The review 
conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which ended on 
Friday with no substantive agreement, was one of these.   

For 35 years, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, has 
been a cornerstone of our global security. With near universal 
membership, the treaty has firmly entrenched a norm against 
nuclear proliferation and helped confound predictions that today 
there would be 25 or more countries with nuclear weapons. 

But today, the treaty faces a dual crisis of compliance and 
confidence. Delegates at the month-long conference, which is held 
once every five years, could not furnish the world with any 
solutions to the grave nuclear threats we all face. And while 
arriving at an agreement can be more challenging in a climate of 
crisis, it is also at such times that it is all the more 
imperative to do so. 

 Let me be clear: Failure of a review conference to come to any
agreement will not break the NPT-based regime. The vast majority
of countries that are parties to the treaty recognize its
enduring benefits. But there are cracks in each of the treaty's
pillars - nonproliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses of
nuclear technology - and each of these cracks requires urgent
repair.   

Since the review conference last met, in 2000, North Korea has 
announced its withdrawal from the treaty and declared itself in 
possession of nuclear weapons. Libya has admitted that it worked 
for years on a clandestine nuclear weapons program. And the 
International Atomic Energy Agency has found undeclared uranium 
enrichment activity in Iran.  Clearly, the NPT-based regime has 
not kept pace with the march of technology and globalization. 
Whereas proliferation among countries was once considered the 
sole concern of the treaty, revelations that the Pakistani 
nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan and others were extensively 
trafficking in nuclear technology and know-how exposed the 
vulnerability of the nonproliferation regime to non-state actors.   

The treaty's framers could hardly have imagined that we would 
have to work tirelessly to prevent terrorists from acquiring and 
using nuclear weapons and related materials. And while progress 
toward disarmament has taken place, there are still 27,000 
nuclear weapons in the world, many of which remain on 
hair-trigger alert.  At the same time, the intergovernmental 
bodies designed to address these challenges are paralyzed. 

In Geneva, the Conference on Disarmament has been unable to agree 
on a program of work for eight years. The UN Disarmament 
Commission has become increasingly marginal, producing no real 
agreement since 2000. And at the NPT review conference, nearly 
two-thirds of the proceedings were consumed by debate about 
agenda and logistics, instead of substantive discussions on how 
to strengthen the nonproliferation regime.  

In my opening address to the conference, I argued that success 
would depend on coming to terms with all the nuclear dangers that 
threaten humanity. I warned that the conference would stall if 
some delegates focused on some threats instead of addressing them 
all. Some countries underscored proliferation as a grave danger, 
while others argued that existing nuclear arsenals imperil us. 
Some insisted that the spread of nuclear fuel-cycle technology 
posed an unacceptable proliferation threat, while others 
countered that access to peaceful uses of nuclear technology must 
not be compromised.   

In the end, delegations regrettably missed the opportunity to 
endorse the merits of all of these arguments. As a result, they 
were unable to advance security against any of the dangers we 
face. How, then, can we overcome this paralysis?   When 
multilateral forums falter, leaders must lead. This September, 
more than 170 heads of state and government will convene in New 
York to adopt a wide-ranging agenda to advance development, 
security and human rights for all countries and all peoples. I 
challenge them to break the deadlock on the most pressing 
challenges in the field of nuclear nonproliferation and 
disarmament. If they fail to do so, their peoples will ask how, 
in today's world, they could not find common ground in the cause 
of diminishing the existential threat of nuclear weapons.   

To revitalize the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, action will be 
required on many fronts. To strengthen verification and increase 
confidence in the regime, leaders must agree to make the 
International Atomic Energy Agency's Additional Protocol the new 
standard for verifying compliance with nonproliferation 
commitments.   

Leaders must find ways to reconcile the right to peaceful uses of 
nuclear energy with the imperative of nonproliferation. The 
regime will not be sustainable if scores more countries develop 
the most sensitive phases of the fuel cycle, and are equipped 
with the technology to produce nuclear weapons on short notice.   

A first step would be to create incentives for countries to 
voluntarily forgo the development of fuel-cycle facilities. I 
commend the nuclear agency and its director general, Mohamed 
ElBaradei, for working to advance consensus on this vital 
question, and I urge leaders to join him in that mission.   
Leaders must also move beyond rhetoric in addressing the question 
of disarmament. 

Prompt negotiation of a fissile material cutoff treaty for all 
countries is indispensable. All countries also should affirm 
their commitment to a moratorium on testing, and to early entry 
into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. And I 
hope leaders will think seriously about what more can be done to 
reduce - irreversibly - the number and role of nuclear weapons in 
the world.   

Bold commitments at the September meeting would breathe new life 
into all forums dealing with disarmament and nonproliferation. 
They would reduce all the risks we face - of nuclear accidents, 
of trafficking, of terrorist use and of use by countries 
themselves. It is an ambitious agenda, and probably daunting to 
some. But the consequences of failure are far more daunting. 
Solutions are within are reach; we must grasp them. 

(Kofi A. Annan is secretary general of the United Nations.)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
				 				
Herald Tribune All rights reserved      
*****************************************************************
 25 Scotsman.com: Blair Could 'Go Nuclear' to Bridge Energy Gap
 
Sun 29 May 2005                                                 
                                
By Andrew Woodcock, PA Political Correspondent 

A former environment minister today voiced fears that Prime
Minister Tony Blair may be ready to approve a new generation of
nuclear power plants to meet Britainâ€™s requirement for
electricity. 

The decision on how to meet the looming energy gap is one of the
most sensitive Mr Blair will face in his third term in office,
and he has not ruled out the nuclear option. 

Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett, whose department is
carrying out a review on how to cut Britainâ€™s carbon
emissions, is known to be hostile to nuclear energy. 

And Mr Blair himself has said that the industry must overcome
objections over cost-efficiency and public acceptability if it
is to play a role in meeting Britainâ€™s future energy needs. 

But ex-minister Michael Meacher today said he was â€œvery
fearfulâ€ that the Prime Minister was vulnerable to pressure
from the industry, because of his tendency to give weight to
arguments in favour of business and new technology. 

Mr Meacher said he was concerned that the PM was putting the
financial priorities of â€œvested interestsâ€ above the needs
of the environment. And he did not rule out the possibility that
Mr Blair had already struck â€œsome kind of dealâ€ with the
nuclear industry to guarantee its future. 

The ex-minister, sacked from Government in 2003 after six years
handling the environment brief, acknowledged that Britain would
have to face up to the energy gap which will open up as ageing
nuclear plants are shut down. 

The three options to fill the gap were renewable sources such as
wind, tidal and solar energy; gas imported from potentially
turbulent regions like Russia or Algeria; and nuclear power. 

Mr Meacher said the Government had voiced support for renewables
in its 2003 White Paper on energy, but had lacked the
â€œpolitical willâ€ to follow through with the investment
needed. 

Asked if he believed this was because Mr Blair was secretly
committed to the nuclear option, he told GMTVâ€™s The Sunday
Programme: â€œI donâ€™t know the answer to that, but it is
clearly the case that he is much more sympathetic to nuclear
than I am. 

â€œWhether he has done some kind of deal with the nuclear
industry, I canâ€™t say, and I donâ€™t suppose if I asked a
question in the House I would get a totally straight answer. 

â€œBut I am sure that the nuclear industry has been pressing him
extremely hard.â€ 

The industry has been telling the PM that, despite concerns over
cost and the difficulty of dealing with waste, nuclear power is
the only way of supplying the energy needed, said Mr Meacher. 

â€œI am very fearful that he will be vulnerable to that
argument. 

â€œThey will say that we have a British nuclear industry which
is a world leader. He is very keen on business, he is very keen
on technology, and I am sure they are telling him they have got
new designs such as theyâ€™ve never had before. 

â€œI am sure that he is very susceptible to that, but I think it
is a very serious long-term mistake.â€ 

Asked why Mr Blair would be more susceptible than other
politicians to the arguments of the nuclear lobby, Mr Meacher
said: â€œBecause I think he is very pro-business â€“ and that is
not a bad thing, but business is always looking after its
commercial interests, which is not the same as the public
interest. 

â€œPoliticians are there to judge the commercial interest
against the public interest. 

â€œHe is also very pro-technology â€“ which again is entirely a
good thing. But he is much less willing to see the force of
arguments about environment, about having power energy sources
which are compatible with the landscape, with the environment. 

â€œIn the long term, these are far, far better, but in the short
term I think he is looking after what is in the financial and
business interest of some of the leading vested interests in
this country. 

â€œWe should beware, as politicians, of being led down by the
nose by vested interests.â€ 

Mr Meacher said he hoped that any new nuclear power plants would
be subject to the approval of Parliament, but was not certain
that MPs would be given an opportunity to vote on the issue.

2005 Scotsman.com 

*****************************************************************
 26 Stunning revelation: What good are sirens? (Patriot News)
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 16:06:21 -0700

 
<x-flowed>


EDITORIALS: What good are sirens?

Sunday, May 29, 2005

It is a stunning revelation to discover, more than a quarter century after 
the near-meltdown
of the Unit 2 nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, that most of the sirens 
surrounding the
atomic station would not sound during a widespread power outage.

Of the 96 sirens associated with the facility -- site of the worst accident 
ever to occur at a
commercial nuclear plant in the United States -- only 19 have a backup 
power source that
would allow them to sound in the event of an emergency at TMI.

Worse, the nuclear station 10 miles south of Harrisburg is, by comparison, 
a veritable model
of all-incident readiness. Other Pennsylvania nuclear power stations at 
Peach Bottom, Limerick,
Susquehanna and Beaver Valley have no backup power-supply systems for their 
sirens
whatsoever, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.


Peach Bottom-owner Exelon Nuclear's plan in the event of a plant emergency 
simultaneous with
a power blackout at the York County facility is to notify the counties. 
They in turn are supposedly
prepared to go door-to-door to notify local residents. We agree with Eric 
Epstein, chairman of
Three Mile Island Alert, that this is an irresponsible backup plan.

It may be true, as asserted by Rich Janati, chief of the division of 
nuclear safety at the state
Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Radiation Protection, 
that the risk of both a
meltdown and a blackout are small. But the risk of meltdown itself is 
small, as is the possibility
of a terrorist attack on a nuclear plant. But the risks do exist and 
enormous preparations have
been made to guard against them. We would argue that in the case of either 
scenario, the chance
of a related power blackout increases dramatically. It doesn't make sense 
not to be prepared for
such an eventuality in which a plant emergency and a power outage coincide.

On a broader level, this failure to provide emergency power to sirens at 
all nuclear plants is
deeply troubling because it shows, once again, that the utility owners of 
the nation's nuclear
plants will only invest in safety to the extent that they are required or 
prodded to do so. And no
less troubling is that the NRC and DEP, the supposed nuclear "watchdogs," 
have for years
gone along with a seriously flawed emergency-warning system.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been reviewing the situation in 
light of the
northeastern blackout in August 2003. But how long does it take to figure 
out that this state
of affairs is unacceptable? It is, and the NRC, as well as state and local 
governments, should
insist that nuclear-plant sirens be capable of sounding the alarm under any 
conceivable set
of circumstances. The utilities should be given a deadline of no more than 
a year to install
the power backup that should have been part of the warning system all along.

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 27 JS Online: Taking the heat off Wisconsin 

Four new power plants, together costing almost a billion
dollars, are coming online this summer 

By THOMAS CONTENT
tcontent@journalsentinel.com Last Updated: May 28, 2005 

Four new power plants costing more than $900 million will be 
online this summer to address Wisconsin's growing appetite for 
electricity. 

Photo/Butch Jorgensen 
The new Port Washington power plant of We Energies, the utility
arm of Wisconsin Energy Corp., is one of four coming into
operation in the state this summer.   
    
Photo/Joe Koshollek 
Students walk past the newly built University of
Wisconsin-Madison cogeneration plant. It will provide chilled
water and steam to the campus and produce electricity.   
  
At least in the short run, the unprecedented addition of new
plants is expected to give businesses and homeowners some
breathing space during prolonged stretches of hot weather. That
comfort zone will be needed because two of the state's three
nuclear power reactors are now unexpectedly out of service into
June. 

But beyond the challenges this summer, the need for power is
expected to grow along with the state's population, and any
advantages the plants bring are likely to be short-lived. 

All fueled by natural gas, the new plants are in Madison,
Kaukauna, Sheboygan Falls and Port Washington. Together, they
will generate nearly 1,300 megawatts of electricity - enough to
supply nearly 650,000 homes, according to state Public Service
Commission estimates. 

The first of the new plants, Madison Gas &Electric Co.'s
150-megawatt facility on the University of Wisconsin-Madison
campus, began generating power in late April, utility spokesman
Steve Kraus said. The Kaukauna and Sheboygan Falls plants will
be working by the middle of June, while Port Washington will be
online later in July. 

Construction of the new plants was part of the state's response
to the power shortages - and threats of rolling blackouts - in
the late 1990s. Those shortages came when the three nuclear
reactors serving the state were out of commission during a hot
summer, forcing utilities to ask state industries to turn off
the power. Those companies were paying special rates in exchange
for giving the utilities the chance to turn down the juice
during periods of peak demand. 

Regulators say that for now there is enough power to withstand a
similar plant shutdown. 
Seven-year outlook


Several small power plants have been built across the state, as
well as a larger, 600-megawatt plant built by energy merchant
Calpine Corp. near Beloit. 

A seven-year energy outlook prepared last year by the Public
Service Commission concluded that the state would be in the best
shape it's been in for a long time this summer, but that demand
would again begin to overwhelm supply toward the end of the
decade. 

Demand has continued to rise, as the state hit an all-time peak
in August 2003. An abnormally cool summer last year meant no new
records were set, but it's likely that a new all-time record
could be set this summer, given an expanding population, a
recovering economy and a normal-summer stretch of hot weather,
industry observers say. 

One concern continues to be the status of the state's nuclear
plants. 

As the summer months approach, the state continues to be without
two of its three nuclear reactors situated southeast of Green
Bay. Combined, the two reactors at Point Beach and one at
Kewaunee contributed nearly one-fifth of the state's energy
supply. 

"We're in good shape. The big caveat is, when is Kewaunee going
to come back?" said Bill Harvey, president and chief operating
officer at Alliant Energy Corp. in Madison. 

Alliant owns a small piece of Kewaunee, along with majority
owner Wisconsin Public Service Corp. 

Kewaunee has been out of service since February and is expected
to resume operating in the first half of June after changes made
to some plant systems are authorized by the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. The Point Beach Unit 2 reactor is being
refueled and having its reactor vessel head replaced. The plant
was expected to return to service Monday, but plant owner
Wisconsin Energy Corp. announced Friday that the shutdown is now
expected to extend "substantially beyond" Monday, based on
unresolved issues with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

The addition of natural-gas generators gives the state more
flexibility entering into the summer, said Dan Ebert, chairman
of the Public Service Commission. 

Another improvement since last summer: construction of another
major power-line link to Illinois, he said. 

"Having these gas units come on this summer should help, no
doubt, because that will help protect against outages," said
Charlie Higley, executive director of the Wisconsin Citizens'
Utility Board. 
Slowing demand


In the years to come, it's hard to tell how many new power
plants will be needed. 

Wisconsin Energy Corp.'s proposed $2.15 billion Oak Creek coal
plants - which would be the largest in the state - remain the
subject of a legal battle. 

Also delayed: a Wausau-to-Duluth power line that will provide
important transmission connections to other markets. 

"Both of them are critical to meeting our needs" in coming
years, Ebert said. 

Energy demand has grown by an average of 2% to 3% a year, and
that trend is expected to continue, according to projections of
utilities and state regulators. 

Opponents of the Oak Creek project have noted that demand has
grown much more slowly than forecast in recent years. And some
industry analysts say rising electricity bills are prodding
users toward conservation. 

Green Bay-based Wisconsin Public Service Corp. said conservation
likely played a role in keeping electricity sales lower than
expected in the most recent quarter. 

Increased reliability has come with a price, as all of the
recently built plants have been fueled by natural gas - which is
more expensive to burn as a fuel and has wild price gyrations.
Of those under construction, only one, the WPS project near
Wausau, would be fueled by coal. 

Customer and environmental groups have questioned whether
utilities are overbuilding, after having failed to add new power
plants for decades. Building new plants has become more
profitable thanks to laws passed in Madison since 1998. 

Harvey disputes that, and notes the considerable angst in
Wisconsin this year about rising electric rates. 

"The least responsible thing for us to do would be to
consciously overbuild, because of the price pressure," he said. 
   Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 29, 2005.
 Get the Journal Sentinel delivered to your home. Subscribe now.

;Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights
reserved.

Journal Sentinel Inc. is a subsidiary of Journal Communications
*****************************************************************
 28 JS Online: Slow repairs have utilities sweating 

As summer season begins, 2 nuclear reactors are offline

 By THOMAS CONTENT

tcontent@journalsentinel.com Posted: May 27, 2005 

Wisconsin will enter the unofficial start of summer without two 
of its three nuclear reactors, a key source of electricity in a 
state that has struggled to cope with rising demand for power. 


  [54070] The Cost   
  Wisconsin Energy estimates that replacing low-cost nuclear
power could cost $400,000 to $500,000 a day during the summer
months and up to $1 million a day on hot summer days. 

The Point Beach Unit 2 reactor will remain out of service for a
period "substantially beyond" Monday, when it was expected to
resume operating, Wisconsin Energy Corp. said Friday. 

The plant has been shut down since April. Together the
twin-reactor Point Beach plant and single-reactor Kewaunee
nuclear power plant supply about one-fifth of the state's
electricity supply. 

The unexpected extension of the Point Beach shutdown comes a
week after it was revealed that the return of the Kewaunee
reactor has again been delayed. Shut down since mid-February,
that plant was supposed to be back working by April and is now
expected to come back in the first half of June. 

Friday's Point Beach announcement triggered immediate concerns
that the state could be facing a replay of the power shortages
seen in the summer of 1997. During a hot summer, all three of
the state's reactors and those in northern Illinois were out of
service. 

Combined with a prolonged spell of hot weather, the shutdowns
might result in utilities' having to ask factories to turn off
their power, something that hasn't occurred here for several
years, said Nino Amato, president of the Wisconsin Industrial
Energy Group, which represents large power plant customers. 

"We may very well dodge a bullet; it may end up just being
another cooler than normal summer, but if we fall back into any
of our historical patterns of some hot spells in June, July and
August and two major base-load plants aren't available, that
puts us in a potential at-risk scenario," he said. 

Meanwhile, customers already grappling with higher bills -
including two We Energies price increases in recent months -
should brace for more increases. 

The state Public Service Commission on Friday said it would
allow We Energies, the utility subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy,
to roll over the extra purchased-power costs relating to the
Point Beach shutdown into a future request for a price increase. 

Those costs are projected to range from $400,000 to $500,000 a
day through the summer and could reach $1 million on a hot
summer day, Wisconsin Energy said in a filing with securities
regulators. 
New plants coming on line


The electricity shortages of the 1990s triggered a series of
laws and changes designed to encourage construction of power
plants. Since 1997, eight large and three small natural
gas-fired plants have been built, with another four scheduled to
crank up power this summer. 

The four scheduled to begin working this year include plants in
Madison and Kaukauna that have already filled in, selling power
while the nuclear plants have been out of service. A third plant
in Sheboygan Falls is scheduled to open Tuesday, and the first
of two new natural gas-fired plants being built by We Energies
is projected to begin running in July. 

Even with the new plants, Point Beach and Kewaunee are critical
to meeting customer demand, industry officials say. 

"The nukes are really a wild card," American Transmission Co.
spokeswoman Maripat Blankenheim said. 

Another significant change is the construction of a new
transmission line linking Illinois with Wisconsin. That line
will increase Wisconsin's ability to import electricity on hot
summer days, energy officials said. 
Maintenance not yet finished


The Point Beach shutdown, begun on April 2, was projected to
last 58 days, or until Monday. Nuclear Management Co., the
company that runs the plant, removed the old reactor cover and
has been refueling the plant. But the new reactor cover has not
been installed because of questions raised by inspectors with
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Regulators raised safety questions about the crane the company
wants to use to lift the vessel cover into place, said Jan
Strasma, an agency spokesman. The regulatory commission has
asked the company to evaluate what kind of damage to the plant
would occur if the crane failed and dropped the cover on the
reactor, Strasma said. 

Sara Cassidy, a spokeswoman for Nuclear Management, said the
company is "in daily contact with NRC," seeking to respond to
the agency's concerns and to "provide additional assurances of
safety." 

Shutdowns relating to vessel covers can take longer than typical
refueling shutdowns. The Kewaunee plant refueling and vessel
cover shutdown was extended by three weeks last fall. 

Nuclear plants across the country, including those in Wisconsin,
are replacing their reactors' vessel covers after an incident at
an Ohio nuclear plant that led to that plant's being shut down
for two years. Inspectors at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo
found that boric acid had eaten a football-sized hole into the
reactor cover. 

    From the May 28, 2005, editions of the Milwaukee Journal
                            Sentinel 
                                
Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights
reserved.

Journal Sentinel Inc. is a subsidiary of Journal Communications
*****************************************************************
 29 Arizona Republic: Changes afoot at nuclear plant
 
[Arizona Republic Online Print Edition]     May 29, 2005   

Changes afoot at nuclear plant Tougher investigations
ordered for safety complaints at Palo Verde 						 

Ken Alltucker
The Arizona Republic
May. 29, 2005 12:00 AM						 

The nation's chief nuclear regulatory watchdog has ordered its
Texas-based office overseeing Palo Verde and other western
nuclear power plants to change the way it investigates employee
nuclear safety complaints. 

Changes stem from what the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
termed "weaknesses" in the agency's Arlington, Texas-based
regional office's handling of a high number of complaints lodged
by employees at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west
of Phoenix. 

Among problems cited by the agency's internal review conducted
last year include a lack of timeliness, attention to detail,
documentation and resolving complaints filed over the past two
years by Palo Verde employees. 

"We acknowledge that we should have gone a littler further and
dug a little deeper," said Victor Dricks, spokesman for the
agency's Region IV office based in Arlington. "We made some
changes in our procedures to ensure that allegations will be
handled more thoroughly."

 The "allegations" program is an important part of ensuring the
2,100-employee plant operates in a safe manner. The program
allows workers to point out safety or security concerns found at
the 2-decade-old plant that plant management or the federal
government's on-site inspectors may not be aware of. Employees
generally file allegations if they believe they cannot get
satisfactory answers or fear retaliation from plant managers.

 But the federal agency's review shouldn't be interpreted as a
letdown of safety initiatives at the nation's largest nuclear
power plant, which is managed by Arizona Public Service Co. 

Three to four federal inspectors are assigned to the power plant
at any given time and constantly review the plant's equipment,
procedures and paperwork to ensure that it operates in a proper
fashion. And when the federal agency sees fit, as it did four
times last year, it will dispatch a special investigative team
to examine a specific problem or issue. 

Dricks and officials in the agency's Rockville, Md.-based
headquarters said part of the problem with handling allegations
stemmed from an unusually high number of complaints lodged at
Palo Verde in recent years. 

Palo Verde largely operated with a stellar safety record over
the past decade, with inspectors finding only minor problems and
the number of employee-filed allegations typically in the low
single digits. 

The number of new allegations at the Wintersburg plant soared
from five in 2002 to 22 in 2003, putting an "incredible strain"
on the regional office's ability to thoroughly process and look
at each complaint, Dricks said. 

That spike in employee complaints came during one of the plant's
busiest times. 

In fall 2003, crews tackled the labor-intensive job of replacing
the steam generators at Unit 2, and a series of events last year
affected the plant's safety margin, even though the plant is
still considered safe.

 "What we're talking about is maintaining high margins of
safety," APS spokesman Jim McDonald said. "We recognize 2004 was
not as good as it has been. Never has the fundamental safety of
the plant been in question."

 The federal agency dispatched special investigative teams to
the plant at four separate times last year, probing everything
from the plant's emergency cooling system to the impact of the
Westwing substation fire that forced Palo Verde's shutdown. The
federal agency spent more than 11,600 hours poring over
documents and inspecting equipment and systems relating to the
plant. 

The agency's most serious finding came after a four-month
investigation that wrapped up this year. Palo Verde was hit with
a $50,000 fine after inspectors discovered a problem with the
plant's emergency cooling system. A special follow-up inspection
is planned for August. 

Rising stress

 
APS acknowledged the past two years have been stressful for the
plant's workforce, possibly one reason for the rise in the
number of employee complaints. 

"When people are tired and stressed, sometimes that is a
contributor," said Craig Seaman, the utility's director of
regulatory affairs. "The tail end of 2003 was a busy time for
us. In 2004, we were expecting to have a year where people could
catch their breath. We never got that opportunity."

 Still, Seaman said plant managers encourage employees to come
forward and report problems without fear of retaliation. "We're
running a nuclear power plant here. If something's not going
right, we want to know about it," Seaman said. 

Some employees say they became frustrated by what they call a
lack of response from plant managers. And at least two employees
say that the federal government investigators who run the
allegations program were no better. 

Silverio Garcia and Dave Misbeek are among the employees who
weren't satisfied with the plant's safety practices, so they
brought a list of concerns first to the plant's management and
later filed allegations with the federal agency.

 They said they both feel that the feds initially brushed aside
their allegations with little effort to investigate, so the two
employees filed a complaint with a higher authority: the
agency's Office of Inspector General.

 That office then directed the agency to review the employees'
complaints about the ineffectiveness of the allegations program,
triggering simultaneous investigations by the agency's Office of
Nuclear Reactor Regulation and a self-assessment by Region IV.

 The federal investigators discovered there indeed were
problems. The Palo Verde employees "brought problems to our
attention," said Arthur Howell, director of Division Reactor
Projects. "We do plan to follow up."

 
Allegations revisited

 
Top agency officials agreed to again investigate five
allegations brought by Misbeek, everything from concerns about
the number of hours employees work each week to the plant's
monitoring of neutrons on the reactor's cement, exterior core.

 The federal agency has identified 10 ways to better process
employee complaints, things such as improving training and
ensuring that key employees are certified, according to agency
spokeswoman Beth Hayden.

 Other improvements require investigators to provide adequate
details when reaching conclusions, ensure that allegations are
investigated within 60 days and ensure that adequate resources
are provided to guarantee timely review of allegations. 

"I think they are turning the corner, starting to do the right
thing," Misbeek said. "It is human nature, you don't want to say
I screwed up."

 APS officials said they would rather handle most employee
complaints without the involvement of the federal regulators. 

While they acknowledge there has been a rift between Palo
Verde's management and employees on issues of safety, they don't
think the problems are insurmountable. The utility even hired a
consultant to poll workers on their perceptions of the safety of
Palo Verde. About 87 percent of workers responded to the
voluntary survey, and most of those workers had a favorable
opinion of the plant's safety initiatives.

 However, employees such as Misbeek warn that the plant needs to
improve its oversight of safety issues. He noted that other
nuclear power plants, such as Davis-Bessie in northern Ohio, had
a history of high employee complaints that revealed serious
problems. The plant owned by FirstEnergy Corp. faces a $5.45
million fine for allowing a critical part of an old nuclear
reactor to get so corroded that it faced possible rupture.

 Misbeek sees it as his personal responsibility to prevent such
problems at Palo Verde.

 "I feel that everybody has to police themselves and police
whatever comes across their desk," Misbeek said. 

Copyright © 2005, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.
*****************************************************************
 30 Portsmouth Herald: Public has right to know about failded Seabrook Station fence
 
editorial

Sun. May 29, 2005

opinion@seacoastonline.com

The idea that the security fence surrounding the Seabrook
Station nuclear power plant has not been operating since it was
installed late last year is frightening enough. But what is more
frightening - and perhaps even more dangerous - is the ability
of plant personnel and owners to hide behind the laws enacted
since Sept. 11, 2001, in order to keep their failures quiet. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission used to put incident reports
on its Web site. It was a way for the public to know just how
safe their local power plants are. 

However, in the paranoia that has gripped this country since
9/11/01, this - as well as other types of information formerly
accessible to the public - is no longer available. 

The fact is neither we, nor you the reader, would have known
about the nuclear plant’s failure to adequately install or test
one of the primary safeguards against a terrorist attack had it
not been for the willingness of someone inside the plant, who
was fed up with how security was being mismanaged, to come
forward. 

This employee took a risk. It showed courage and more concern
for the community surrounding the nuclear plant than was evident
from the plant’s management, which failed to do the things
necessary to find out if this perimeter intrusion fence was
working properly. 

It makes one wonder just what else is going wrong inside our
nuclear plants, chemical-production facilities, ports and
airports that we citizens will never be able to find out about -
and, therefore, never be able to exert the pressure necessary to
change them - because that information is deemed too sensitive
to be released. 

In fact, when we asked a Seabrook Station official to confirm
the fence failure, he said he could not because he would be in
violation of federal law. He also warned that sharing this
important information with our readers could bring federal fines
and punishments. 

We decided to write the story because we believe our readers,
almost all of whom live within the 10-mile evacuation zone
surrounding Seabrook Station, need to know the failure of a
primary security system had gone undetected for nearly eight
months. We also factored in information from Seabrook officials
that they had immediately embarked on correcting the problem and
there are sufficient redundant systems in place to keep the
plant and the public safe. 

But we were told at least one other news organization had
information about the fence failure and decided not to release
it to the public. We can only assume it was because of the
threat of federal reprisals. 

There is certainly a concern that reporting on security failures
at potential terrorist targets could make that information known
to those willing to take advantage of those soft spots in order
to wreak havoc on our country and our citizens. However, in many
cases the option is to simply take the word of those with vested
interests in portraying an aura of security when none actually
exists, as the Seabrook Station event shows. 

One of the roles of the media is to be the watchdog that barks
at night, and tells everyone in the house something is wrong -
especially if the back gate is open. Increasingly, there is a
desire of policymakers, especially the current majority party in
power, to muzzle the dog. Federal policymakers would like less
public oversight, but more knowledge of your most intimate
details. A free press is a vital part of our system of checks
and balances, and was very much envisioned by our founding
fathers. 

The Seabrook Station incident shows how these issues play out
right here in our back yard. We are best as a community, and as
a nation, when we allow openness and public scrutiny of homeland
security, when we insist on transparency as to what our
government "of the people" has done lately - or has not done -
to protect us. 

-Herald Sunday 

  Seacoast Online is owned and operated by Seacoast Newspapers.
  Copyright © 2005 Seacoast Online. All rights reserved. Please
*****************************************************************
 31 WorldNetDaily: When Greenies go nuclear
 
  SATURDAY MAY 28 2005           
        
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com 

Sir David King, her majesty's chief scientist, has declared 
"global warming" to be a more serious threat to mankind than 
international terrorism. Hans Blix, former director general of 
the International Atomic Energy Agency, concurs. 

James Lovelock, father of the Gaia hypothesis, thinks King and 
Blix – if anything – still underestimate the seriousness of the 
"global warming threat." 

So serious that Lovelock now urges the fastest possible
substitution of nuclear energy for "fossil" fuels: 

Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by
Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These
fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952
has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. 

I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop
their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy. Even if they were
right about its dangers – and they are not – its worldwide use
as our main source of energy would pose an insignificant threat
compared with the dangers of intolerable and lethal heat waves
and sea levels rising to drown every coastal city of the world. 

We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources;
civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear – the
one safe, available energy source – now or suffer the pain soon
to be inflicted by our outraged planet. 

How did Havelock – if not Blix and Sir David – come to view so
seriously mankind's increasing use of coal, oil and natural gas? 

The U.N. International Panel on Climate Change caused to be
established – in 1992 – the Framework Convention on Climate
Change, to which President Bush, the elder, made us a party. 

The IPCC stated mission is "to assess the scientific, technical
and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of
the risk of human-induced climate change." 

The operative term is "human-induced." 

The IPCC has three working groups, one of which is charged with
assessing options for limiting "human" greenhouse-gas emissions. 

So why haven't the IPCC weenies also settled on the
nuclear-power option as man's last best hope to prevent global
warming? 

Well, because of Greenie opposition, the IPCC weenies haven't
even let – literally – the International Atomic Energy Agency
weenies in the door to make their case. 

But, that Greenie position may be about to change. 

The UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol – which went into force in February
– obligates all "industrialized" signatories to reduce by 2012
their emissions of six "greenhouse gases" – primarily carbon
dioxide – to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels! 

Because of the Greenies, five European Union signatories –
including Belgium, with 60 percent of its electricity nuclear –
were already officially committed to phasing out nuclear power. 

Worse, one of the conditions of EU accession is the closure of
all first-generation nuclear power plants. More than 85 percent
of Lithuania's electricity is generated by such plants. 

But wait. End-running the IPCC, the IAEA recently sponsored an
International Conference on Nuclear Power for the 21st Century. 

And guess what? Some EU countries – including Germany – are
having second thoughts about phasing out nuclear power. For one
thing, replacing Germany's nuclear power plants with coal-fired
plants would result in an increase of more than 170 million
metric tons in carbon dioxide emissions. 



Finland will begin construction of Olkiluoto-3 later this year,
and Electricité de France is scheduled to begin construction of
a new power plant at Flamanville in 2007. 

Of course, one of the weird things about the Kyoto protocol is
that "developing" countries like India and China are not
covered. 

Nevertheless, China plans to raise its total installed nuclear
electricity generating capacity from the current 6.5 gigawatts
to 36 gigawatts by 2020. 

Russia plans to raise its nuclear generating capacity from the
current 22 gigawatts to 40-45 gigawatts by 2020. 

And, Russia and China plan to build a half-dozen gigawatt plants
in Iran in the next few years. 

In fact, Mohammad Saeidi, a vice president of the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, told the IAEA conferees that Iran's goal
is "nothing less than self-sufficiency in all aspects of the
peaceful use of nuclear energy" – all subject to the IAEA
Safeguards regime, of course. 

Up until now, Bush and the neo-crazies have argued that Iran
should be denied – by force, if necessary – their "inalienable
right" under the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
to such self-sufficiency because oil-rich Iran has no
"legitimate" reason to have it. 

No legitimate reason? Perhaps Bush needs to talk to Lovelock and
the Greenies.
 
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy
implementing official for national security-related technical
matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and
Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr.
Prather also served as legislative assistant for national
security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking
member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate
Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had
earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National
Laboratory in New Mexico. 

[WorldNetDaily.com] 
*****************************************************************
 32 Rutland Herald: State: Uprate review to go on (VY)
                
May 28, 2005 
                                                                                                 
By LOUIS PORTER Vermont Press Bureau   
  			 
MONTPELIER — Opponents of the expansion of the Vermont Yankee
nuclear plant were unable to prove a federal inspection of the
facility was faulty, however the Public Service Board made it
clear its review of the plan is not over.

"We do not think the process is yet complete," Michael Dworkin,
acting chairman of the Public Service Board, told plant owner
Entergy Nuclear on Friday during an unusual appearance before
the state board by officials of the federal Nuclear Regulatory
Commission.

The Public Service Board, which deals with electricity
reliability issues in Vermont, and the NRC, which deals with
safety, must both be satisfied before the proposed 20 percent
increase in power production from the facility goes ahead.

The independent inspection was a condition of the board's
preliminary approval of a production increase granted in March
2004, and Dworkin said the board will also await the findings of
the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, a federal review
board, before signing off completely.

The committee is likely to hold a hearing in the state before
making a ruling, and the process will probably take several
months at least, officials said.

A Yankee spokesman said Entergy does not oppose the board's
decision to wait for the reactor safeguards committee before
making its decision.

The NRC inspection last year uncovered nine problems at the
Vermont Yankee plant, including a pressure control value
improperly installed and questions about back-up power supply if
there is a regional black-out.

The report also included concerns over whether the plant could
be safely shut down if there was a fire in the control room.

"Entergy's proposed power uprate would further reduce the time
available to perform these steps," NRC officials noted.

But all of the identified safety issues were deemed to be "of
very low safety significance" and most have been addressed or
planned for, the federal officials said.

The New England Coalition, an anti-nuclear group with standing
in the case, said the NRC's inspection was limited and
invalidated by its lack of specific criteria.

"The only way the safety of Vermont Yankee can be assured is to
identify the applicable regulations," said Paul Blanch, an
engineer who works with the group. He called the inspection
"little more than kicking the tires."

Raymond Shadis of the organization said when the hours for
routine inspection were subtracted, the NRC spent less time
inspecting the plant than it claimed.

But NRC officials said the inspection, part of a pilot program
to consider new inspection methods, was thorough. Indeed, one of
the four inspections of nuclear plants done in the pilot program
resulted in the temporary closure of a plant, something more
than 100 regular inspections over the past five years have not
done, officials said.

Criteria for safe operation are based on specifications and
procedures established for each plant and each component part,
they added.

"It's not something we make up or find on the fly," said Stu
Richards, chief of the inspection program for NRC.

William Sherman, the Public Service Department's nuclear
engineer, said the inspection in which he participated was done
well.

"We see the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doing exactly what we
think it should do," he said.

One of the issues which federal regulators will examine as they
continue to consider the proposed increase in power production
is the plant's steam dryer. That component removes water from
the plant's heat exhaust system, and could be impacted by
increased volume, officials and advocates said.

Because the Vermont Yankee steam dryer was already under review,
it was not part of last fall's inspection, NRC officials said.

"We have implemented changes to the steam dryer," said Rob
Williams, Vermont Yankee spokesman. "Other plants have seen
problems with their dryers after uprate," he added.

Contact Louis Porter at .

*****************************************************************
 33 l'express dimanche: Nuclear Power : rising from the Grave ?   
 
Dimanche 29 mai 2005 - No. 15438       

DYER’S POINT

The debate is getting as heated as the planet, but it has moved 
on. Outside the United States, where the climate-change denial 
industry still trots out its few tame scientists to question the 
reality of global warming, it is now about the best way to cut 
carbon emissions fast without bringing the whole structure of 
industrial civilisation grinding to a halt -- and the almost 
defunct nuclear-power industry is seizing the opportunity to make 
a come-back.

The early enthusiasm for nuclear power that saw several hundred
big nuclear reactors built in 1955-75 died after the partial
melt-down of a reactor at Three Mile Island in the United States
in 1979 and the much worse disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine in
1986. Those incidents, together with the problem of what to do
with thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste, stopped
practically all new construction.

France and Japan continued to build reactors, which now supply
over two-thirds of France's electricity consumption and almost a
third of Japan's, but in most other big countries the share of
nuclear power levelled out at one-fifth of total consumption or
less (US 19 percent, Britain 21 percent, Russia 16 percent).
Even in countries where nuclear power provided a bigger share of
the total load, like Sweden (41 percent) and Germany (28
percent), anti-nuclear movements got official commitments that
existing nuclear reactors would not be replaced when they
reached the end of their useful lives.

But then came the panic over climate change -- and nuclear power
produces large amounts of electricity with zero carbon
emissions. If we really are facing a global emergency on the
climate front, maybe building new reactors is the least bad
option to get the world through the crisis of the next
generation, because "alternative" carbon-free energy sources
like wind, wave, and solar power will not be enough to fill the
gap if we must cut back hugely on fossil-fuel sources of power
-- and the crisis is real.

The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: every one of the
924 peer-reviewed articles on climate change published in the
journal "Science" between 1997 and 2003 supported the claim that
human activity is responsible for global warming. The urgency of
curbing carbon emissions is equally beyond question: over the
past million years the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
has fluctuated between 200 and 300 parts per million, but in the
past 150 years (since the industrial revolution) it has leaped
to 380 ppm -- and it is now rising at 2 ppm per year.

Last January's report "Meeting the Climate Challenge," produced
by the Center of American Progress in the US, Britain's
Institute for Public Policy Research, and the Australia
Institute, concluded that beyond 400 ppm, a global temperature
rise of at least 2 degrees C (3.5 degrees F) becomes inevitable,
disrupting food production, water supply and ecosystems. "Above
the 2 degrees level, the risks of accelerated or runaway climate
change increase. The risks include reaching climatic tipping
points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic
and Greenland ice sheets,…the shutdown of…the Gulf Stream, and
the transformation of the planet's forests and soils to a net
source of carbon."

Apocalypse is arriving on a very tight schedule, since the world
will reach 400 ppm in just ten years if drastic changes are not
made to the ways we produce and/or consume energy. That is why
even a lifelong Green like James Lovelock, the man who
originated the immensely influential Gaia hypothesis, has
changed his tune. "We must stop gaining energy from fossil fuels
in a way that emits greenhouse gases to the air and we must do
it in the next decade," he said last March. "Carbon
sequestration is a grand idea but can we achieve it in time ?
Clean renewable energy sounds appealing, but in practice is
ruinously expensive…."

"Burning gas instead of coal also sounds good since it cuts
carbon dioxide emissions in half, but in practice it may be the
most dangerous energy source of all, because natural gas is 23
times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2….I cannot see the United
States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting
back; soon they will be the main source of emissions….There is
no sensible alternative to nuclear energy. I believe this supply
of electricity will give us the chance to survive through the
difficult times to come. Our civilisation is energy-intensive
and we cannot turn it off without crashing."

The debate over nuclear power is highly emotional, and Lovelock
has been vilified by his former supporters for advancing such a
proposal. Quicker and deeper cuts in carbon emissions could be
achieved, they point out, by just reducing our use of energy for
non-essential purposes. It takes three average wind-farms, for
example, to make up for the carbon dioxide emitted by one jumbo
jet that crosses the Atlantic twice a day. Lovelock and other
like him are actually making the political calculation that deep
cuts in energy use cannot be sold to reluctant governments and
consumers until we are much deeper into climate change, by which
time it will be too late. Whereas pushing nuclear power, despite
all its problems, will attract allies in industry and demand no
sacrifices from consumers who cannot see past the end of their
SUVs. It is a counsel of desperation, but they think that these
are desperate times.

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 34 Sen Obama: NRC oversight speech

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
 
Date:   05/26/2005   
      
Statement of Senator Barack Obama Oversight on the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission 
  
Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. 

As electricity demand throughout the nation increases in the 
coming decades, we will be challenged in how best to meet these 
consumption demands without sacrificing the environment. That 
means creating jobs, protecting water and air quality, 
establishing energy independence, and using all of our energy 
resources fully and wisely. 

I strongly support greater energy conservation and greater 
federal investment in renewable technologies such as wind and 
solar, which ought to receive greater attention in our national 
energy policy than they likely will this year.

However, as Congress considers policies to address air quality 
and the deleterious effects of carbon emissions on the global 
ecosystem, it is reasonable â€“ and realistic â€“ for nuclear 
power to remain on the table for consideration. Illinois has 11 
nuclear power plants â€“ the most of any State in the country â€“ 
and nuclear power provides more than half of Illinoisâ€™ 
electricity needs.

But keeping nuclear power on the table â€“ and indeed planning 
for the construction of new plants â€“ is only possible if the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission is vigilant in its mission. We need 
better long-term strategies for storing and securing nuclear 
waste and for ensuring the safe operation of nuclear power 
plants. How we develop these strategies is a major priority for 
me.

I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses, and I 
thank the Chair for holding this hearing. 

		   
  # # # # #   	 
*****************************************************************
 35 NRC: Senate hearing comments on by NRC's Diaz on 5/26 (Large)

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
 
Date:   05/26/2005   
      
Statement of Nils J. Diaz Chairman U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission Oversight on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

Introduction

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, it is a pleasure to 
appear before you today with my fellow Commissioners to discuss 
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissionâ€™s programs. We 
appreciate the past support that we have received from the 
Subcommittee and the Committee as a whole, and we look forward to 
working with you in the future. I request that my written 
testimony, on behalf of the Commission, be submitted for the 
record.

The NRC is dedicated to the mission mandated by Congress - - to 
ensure adequate protection of public health and safety, promote 
the common defense and security, and protect the environment - - 
in the application of nuclear technology for civilian use. We 
have taken an integrated approach to safety, security, and 
emergency preparedness in carrying out this mission. Many of the 
Commissionâ€™s initiatives over the past several years have 
focused on enhancing safety, security and emergency preparedness, 
while improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and openness of 
our regulatory system. I will highlight our key ongoing oversight 
and licensing activities, including pertinent initiatives. 

Reactor Oversight Programs


The Reactor Oversight Process has now been implemented for five 
years, with increasing effectiveness and maturity. We believe 
that this program is a significant improvement over the former 
inspection, enforcement, and assessment processes, and has 
brought a more disciplined and objective approach to oversight of 
nuclear power plants. Performance indicators and inspection 
findings for every power reactor can be found on NRC's public web 
site, as well as our current assessment of each reactorâ€™s 
overall performance. We continue to strive to make further 
enhancements to the program, and specifically to improve the 
predictability of performance degradation with Performance 
Indicators.

As you know, the NRC staff has devoted significant resources
over the past three years to oversight of the Davis-Besse
nuclear power plant in Ohio. We took these actions following the
discovery of significant degradation of a portion of the reactor
vessel head. The NRC authorized the plant to restart in March
2004 only after an extensive plant recovery program and
comprehensive corrective actions by the licensee, and
considerable NRC inspection and assessment. With the restart
decision, the NRC issued a Confirmatory Order requiring
independent assessments and inspections at Davis-Besse to ensure
that long-term corrective actions remain effective. Overall, the
plant has been operating safely, and the NRC staff recently
determined that plant performance warrants termination of the
special panel that was created specifically for the oversight of
Davis-Besse. However, the NRC is continuing increased regulatory
oversight under the reactor oversight process, including
continued oversight of the independent assessments required by
the Confirmatory Order. 

In April 2005, NRC proposed a $5.45 million fine against the 
licensee, FirstEnergy for violations of NRC requirements 
associated with the significant reactor vessel head damage 
discovered in March 2002 at Davis-Besse. This is the largest 
single fine ever proposed by the NRC. This substantial fine 
emphasizes the high safety significance of FirstEnergyâ€™s 
failure to comply with NRC requirements, and the companyâ€™s 
willful failure to provide the NRC with complete and accurate 
information. Matters related to Davis-Bessie have also been 
referred to the Department of Justice.

As previously reported, we have undertaken a critical review of
our programmatic and oversight activities to evaluate our own
actions associated with the reactor vessel head degradation at
Davis-Besse. This review includes NRCâ€™s internal Davis-Besse
Lessons Learned Task Force Report together with reports from
NRCâ€™s Office of Inspector General and the Government
Accountability Office. Our corrective actions and program
improvement efforts resulted in 49 significant recommendations.
Currently, staff has completed addressing 44 of the 49
recommendations. Four of the remaining items will be completed
within the next few months. The one remaining action, which
requires development of an engineering code, has a long lead
time. 
        

NRC recognizes that communication failures were an underlying
cause for issues discovered at Davis-Besse. The corrective
actions outlined in the lessons-learned task force action plans
specifically address communications. There has been a
significant improvement in the communications among NRC
regional, headquarters, and site offices, resulting in improved
oversight activities. 

In response to the Commission directive issued in August 2004,
the NRC staff is currently developing a list of safety culture
attributes, indicators, and objective measures and identifying
gaps relative to the evaluation of safety culture. The staffâ€™s
activities will take into account the ongoing industry
initiatives and the experience of foreign regulators. In October
2004, a guidance document outlining NRCâ€™s expectations for
establishing and maintaining a safety conscious work
environment, a key attribute of safety culture, was published
for comment. The staff expects to issue the final document this
summer. The next step is to modify the Reactor Oversight Process
to more fully address the management of safety and safety
culture issues by licensees, and to develop better methods,
tools, and training for the NRCâ€™s inspection staff. 

Reactor Licensing Programs


The reactor licensing program, coupled with a strong oversight
program, ensures that operating nuclear power plants maintain
adequate protection of public health and safety throughout the
plantâ€™s operating life. NRC licensing activities include using
state-of-the-art science, engineering and risk assessment
methods and information from operating experience to establish
reactor safety standards, to promulgate the related rules,
regulations, orders and generic communications as appropriate,
and to review applications consistent with these requirements.
In Fiscal Year (FY) 2004, NRC staff completed 1,741 licensing
actions involving all 104 licensed reactors. 

â€¢     License Renewal


One of the most significant types of licensing actions for
existing reactors involves license renewals. These reviews are
focused on plant aging issues, including a thorough
determination of the plantâ€™s passive components. In 2004,
seven reactors had their licenses renewed for an additional 20
years and two reactor licenses were renewed thus far in 2005.
That brings the total number of renewed reactor licenses to
thirty-two. In every instance, the staff has met its timeliness
goals in carrying out the safety and environmental reviews
required by our regulations. Sixteen additional license renewal
applications are currently under review. The agency recently
returned a license renewal application covering two reactors to
a licensee because the staffâ€™s initial review determined that
the application was not acceptable for docketing. The Agency
also held significant discussions with another licensee about
the adequacy of its license renewal application. We expect that
almost all of the 104 reactors licensed to operate will apply
for renewal of their licenses, and the staff will continue to
face a significant workload in this area for the next seven to
ten years.


â€¢	Power Uprates

Another significant type of licensing action, called a power
uprate, involves a request to raise the maximum power level at
which a plant may operate. Improvement of instrument accuracy
and plant hardware modifications, in addition to improvements in
computational tools and engineering models enabling more
accurate engineering analyses, have allowed licensees to propose
power uprates from the level initially authorized while
maintaining appropriate safety margins. The focus of our review
of these applications has been and will continue to be on
safety. 

To date, the NRC has approved 105 power uprates which have
safely added capacity equivalent to more than four large nuclear
power plants. Currently, the NRC has 11 power uprate
applications under review and expects to receive an additional
16 applications through calendar year 2006. 


The NRC closely monitors operating experience at plants that
have implemented power uprates. The NRC has observed cases of
steam dryer cracking and flow-induced vibration damage affecting
components and supports for the main steam and feedwater lines
in Boiling Water Reactors with extended power uprates. We
conducted inspections to identify the causes of several of these
issues and evaluated many of the repairs performed by the
licensees. We continue to closely monitor the industryâ€™s
response to these issues. We have factored this experience into
our review of pending applications and plan to do the same for
future applications.

â€¢	New Reactor Licensing

Improved safety and reliability performance have resulted in
significant overall improvements in nuclear power plants,
including electrical generation output and production costs. The
strong performance, increased electrical demand, and inclusion
of nuclear energy in our nationâ€™s energy mix appear to be
conducive to industry interest in new construction of nuclear
power plants. 


The NRC is prepared to discharge its responsibilities if
applications for new power plants are filed. We anticipate that
applicants for new nuclear power plants will utilize the
licensing processes promulgated in 10 CFR Part 52, which was
developed to provide a more stable, timely and predictable
licensing process. This process is designed to resolve safety
and environmental issues, including emergency preparedness and
security, prior to the physical construction of a new nuclear
power plant. Under 10 CFR Part 52, the design certification
process resolves the fundamental technical and safety issues
related to the plant design, while the early site permit process
resolves safety and environmental issues related to a specific
potential site. Use of the design certification and early site
permit processes can significantly increase regulatory certainty
because the issues resolved through these two processes can be
referenced in an application for a combined construction permit
and operating license. This is referred to as a combined
license. This license would specify inspections, tests, and
analyses which the licensee must perform, and the acceptance
criteria that will be used to verify conformance with the
regulations before the facility can commence operation. The NRC
considers Part 52 to be a strong and viable approach for review
of future reactor applications and is working to incorporate
recent experience gained from design certification reviews,
current early site permit reviews, discussions with nuclear
industry representatives, and input from the public to further
enhance this process. 

The NRC has already certified three new reactor designs and
codified them in the regulations, making them available for new
plant orders. These designs include General Electricâ€™s
Advanced Boiling Water Reactor and Westinghouseâ€™s AP600 and
System 80+ designs. In addition, the NRC issued the Final Design
Approval for the AP1000, and its proposed design certification
rule was recently published for public comment. The NRC
encourages early communication with potential applicants to
identify unique design features or challenging licensing issues
through the pre-application process. Currently, the NRC is
engaged in conducting preliminary discussions on six additional
reactor designs. These discussions indicate that we could
receive several design certification applications in the near
future. 

The NRC received three early site permit applications in late
2003 for sites at which operating reactors already exist in
Virginia, Illinois, and Mississippi. Schedules are in place to
complete the safety reviews and environmental impact statements
in approximately two years from the date of an application. In
fact, the NRC staff has already issued draft safety evaluation
reports and draft environmental impact statements on all three
early site permit applications for public comment. The mandatory
adjudicatory hearings associated with the early site permits are
currently ongoing.

Finally, Part 52 provides for a combined construction/operating
license process which allows applicants to seek, in a single
application, a license authorizing both construction and
operation prior to construction. This leads to combining
adjudication of licensing issues in one hearing, instead of the
two hearings utilized previously. Furthermore, the efficiency of
NRCâ€™s safety-focused reviews would be substantially increased
if applicants utilize an early site permit and certified design
in their combined license applications. Although specific plans
from the industry are not yet available, the NRC may receive up
to five combined license applications beginning in 2007-2008.

The Commission is fully committed to ensuring that our agency
is ready to meet the expected demand for new reactor licensing
through maintaining a strong regulatory framework and adequate
staffing and funds for handling multiple combined license
applications. We will continue to work with stakeholders to
address issues associated with implementation of our licensing
process and Congress to ensure that our resource needs are
identified.

Security

The Commission continues to impose new requirements, when
appropriate, to enhance security of nuclear facilities and
materials and communicate these requirements to our licensees.
Our efforts also include close communication and coordination
with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other
agencies in the intelligence and law enforcement communities.

 
â€¢	Nuclear Power Plant Security

On February 25, 2002, the NRC required additional protective
measures and strategies by each power plant licensee to protect
against land-based and waterborne attacks and to provide
additional mitigative capabilities for large explosions or fires
at nuclear power plants, including those that could be caused by
aircraft attack. Furthermore, increased coordination with local,
state and national authorities was implemented to strengthen
both prevention and mitigation. NRC power plant licensees were
required to implement responsive measures by August 29, 2002.
The NRC conducted inspections of each facility, required action
to address noted deficiencies, and is in the process of further
confirming implementation of best practices across the industry.

Additional Orders were issued from January 2003 through April
2003. This set of Orders addressed access control, physical
barriers, training and qualification programs--as well as
work-hour limits--or security personnel, capabilities to defend
against more challenging threats, and spent fuel storage and
transportation. For the requirements relating to the
supplemental threat characteristics, additional site-specific
analyses were required. NRC licensees implemented these orders
by October 29, 2004. Licensee measures to address supplemental
threat characteristics were evaluated immediately upon
submission, and implementation continues to be inspected by a
variety of means.

The NRC is currently developing a proposed rule and supporting
guidance to codify supplemental requirements related to the
Design Basis Threat (DBT). The proposed rule, due to the
Commission in June 2005, is expected to be issued later this
year for public comment, and the final rule is scheduled for
completion in 2006. Also, we have redefined our baseline
inspection program for physical protection and are phasing in
the new inspection program consistent with the new requirements
at power reactors. As a complement to licensee security
measures, NRC is working with DHS and the Homeland Security
Council, as well as other partners to enhance the integrated
Federal, State, and local response planning for threats and
attacks on nuclear facilities. We are also supporting DHSâ€™s
comprehensive review of security and emergency preparedness of
nuclear power plant sites under the National Infrastructure
Protection Plan. 

The NRC has completed a set of security assessments and
identified mitigation strategies for NRC-licensed nuclear
facilities. Thus far, the results of these assessments have
validated the actions NRC has taken to enhance security as well
as areas needing further improvements. These efforts have
continued to affirm the robustness of these facilities, the
effectiveness of redundant systems and defense-in-depth design
principles, the value of existing programs for operator training
in severe accident management strategies, and emergency
preparedness. Assessments performed to date confirm the low
likelihood of damaging the reactor core and releasing
radioactivity that could affect public health and safety. 

Further, these assessments confirm that even in the unlikely
event of a radiological release due to terrorist activities, the
NRCâ€™s emergency planning basis remains valid. These
assessments also indicate that significant damage to a spent
fuel pool is improbable, that it is highly unlikely that the
impact on a dry spent fuel storage cask would cause a
significant release of radioactivity, and that the impact of a
large aircraft on a transportation cask would not likely result
in a release of radioactive material. Thus, we believe that
measures implemented with respect to nuclear power plant safety,
security, and emergency planning programs continue to provide
reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health
and safety. We are continuing to perform detailed plant-specific
studies to further enhance our understanding of appropriate
mitigative capabilities and to ensure effective implementation
of these capabilities.

We continue to implement the force-on-force exercise inspection
program to evaluate licenseesâ€™ defensive capabilities and
identify areas for improvement. In late 2004, NRC began full
implementation of a triennial force-on-force exercise program
for power reactors following a pilot force-on-force exercise
program. The triennial force-on-force exercise program applied
lessons learned from the pilot program and additional
enhancements including the use of Multiple Integrated Laser
Enhancement System (MILES) equipment, Composite Adversary Force
(CAF) standards, improved controller training, and other
enhancements to improve the realism of the exercises while
maintaining safety of both the plant and personnel. 

We have reviewed the Wackenhut Corporation's program for the
CAF for force-on-force exercises, including the hiring and
training of new members in accordance with the CAF standard
established by the NRC. The review found that the Wackenhut
Corporation's program meets the NRC's CAF standard, confirmed
that appropriate management and administrative controls were in
place within the Wackenhut organization to provide adequate
independence between the CAF and nuclear guard force, and that
some CAF members are selected from sites where security is
provided by Wackenhut's competitors. Experience with recent
force-on-force exercises has proven the existing CAF to be a
significant improvement in ensuring a uniform high quality for
mock-terrorist attack exercises.

In relation to the study conducted by the National Academy
of Sciences (NAS), the U.S. Congress directed the NRC to take
the necessary steps to improve the analyses related to spent
nuclear fuel storage at commercial reactor sites, including the
preparation of site-specific models, and to ensure timely
application of this information by the utilities to mitigate
risks. The NRC has taken numerous actions to enhance the
security of spent nuclear fuel. The results of security
assessments completed to date show that storage of spent fuel
continues to be safe and secure. Nonetheless, the Commission
agrees with the NAS recommendation that plant-specific analyses
are needed and the NRC is conducting them and continuing to
improve its analyses related to spent nuclear fuel. 

	 â€¢	Material Security

 
Since September 11, 2001, the NRC has thoroughly reevaluated
its safeguards and security programs. To date, has issued over
16 different categories of Orders and Confirmatory Action
Letters covering hundreds of licensees and actions involving
radioactive materials of greatest concern. The NRC continues to
devote considerable effort to determining what additional
actions should be used to enhance the security of these
materials in use, in storage, or in transport. The emphasis of
this effort is on preventing the use of radioactive materials
that have the potential to pose a risk to public health and
safety if used in a radiological dispersal device or a
radiological exposure device (RDD/RED). 

The Commission, in coordination with our Department of Energy
(DOE) colleagues, has taken the following actions to improve the
security of radioactive sources of greatest concern: 1) issued
advisories to licensees to enhance security measures; 2) issued
the DOE/NRC Interagency Working Group Report on RDD/REDs, which
defined threshold quantities for radioactive materials that are
the highest risk and have a potential for malevolent use; 3)
worked with the Departments of Energy and State and the
international community to reach agreement on which radioactive
materials and sources are of the greatest concern, consistent
with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Code of
Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources; 4)
approved a final rule amending its export and import
regulations, in coordination with the Departments of State,
Energy, and Homeland Security, to impose more stringent controls
over the Category I and Category II materials defined by the
IAEA Code of Conduct; 5) is developing a National Source
Tracking System to track radioactive materials of greatest
concern specified in the IAEA Code of Conduct on a permanent
basis; and 6) developed an interim database of Category I and II
radioactive sources for both NRC and Agreement State licensees
which will be maintained until the National Source Tracking
System is complete. 



Emergency Preparedness and Response

NRC recognizes the importance of the integration of safety,
security, and emergency preparedness and response to fulfill the
primary NRC mission of protecting public health and safety.
Since September 11, 2001, the NRC has increased its focus on
potential terrorist scenarios as initiating events. As part of
the Orders issued in February 2002, the NRC required nuclear
power plant operators to make enhancements in several areas of
emergency preparedness, including emergency response facilities,
emergency response organizations, classification of and response
to credible threats, and evaluation of a broader range of
hazards. Nuclear industry groups and Federal, State, and local
government agencies have taken an active role in the prompt
implementation of these measures and have participated in drills
and exercises to test new planning and response elements.

 
The NRC conducted a formal evaluation of the emergency
preparedness planning basis in view of the current threat
environment and determined that emergency preparedness at
nuclear power plants remains strong. Improvements have been made
in the areas of communications, resource management, emergency
exercise programs, and NRC guidance documents used by licensees.
These improvements are reviewed and inspected. Recently, the
Commission directed the staff to issue a generic communication
to licensees to further enhance emergency preparedness in the
post 9/11 environment. The NRC intends to conduct outreach
activities with external stakeholders, especially state and
local government agencies, to describe the enhancements and
solicit feedback on these changes and other emergency
preparedness and response issues of mutual interest.

 
The NRC has also implemented the National Response Plan on
schedule. Between October 2004 and January 2005, NRC staff
briefed over 400 industry and government stakeholders in all
four NRC regions on the implementation of the National Response
Plan and the National Incident Management System. 

		 Materials Program

The NRC, in partnership with the 33 Agreement States, conducts
comprehensive programs to ensure the safe use of radiological
materials in a variety of medical, industrial and research
settings. As some of NRCâ€™s responsibilities, including
inspection and licensing actions, have been assumed by Agreement
States, our success depends in part on their success, and we
closely coordinate our activities with the States.

The NRC is developing a web-based materials licensing system
that is expected to provide a secure method for licensees to
request licensing actions and to view the status of licensing
actions. In addition, the NRC, with assistance from other
Federal agencies and the States, is establishing a National
Source Tracking System that will be used to monitor radioactive
sources that warrant the greatest control. The implementation of
the National Source Tracking System continues to be a
high-priority effort, and this project remains on schedule to be
operational in 2007. 

The Commission has also implemented a major rule change related
to large fuel cycle facilities which requires licensees and
applicants to perform an integrated safety analysis that applies
risk-based insights to the regulation of their facilities. Major
licensing reviews currently underway use the requirements of the
new rule. These licensing reviews include two proposed
commercial gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities.

The first of these proposed enrichment facilities would be
located in New Mexico and the second in Ohio. Louisiana Energy
Services submitted an application for its facility in Eunice,
New Mexico, to the NRC in December 2003. USEC then submitted its
application to the NRC for its site in Piketon, Ohio, in August
2004. The NRC staff expects to complete its review of the
Louisiana Energy Servicesâ€™ application and issue both the
Final Environmental Impact Statement and the Safety Evaluation
Report next month. The NRC staff review of USECâ€™s application
is well underway, and the staff is working to meet the
established thirty-month schedule. 

In March 2005, NRC staff authorized construction of a mixed
oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River site
in South Carolina as part of the DOEâ€™s program to dispose of
excess weapons grade plutonium. At present, an adjudicatory
proceeding concerning construction authorization for the
facility is before the Commissionâ€™s Atomic Safety and
Licensing Board. The NRC staff is also providing support to its
Russian counterparts regarding the licensing of a Russian MOX
facility that will have a design similar to the U.S. facility. 


In addition to the new facilities discussed above, the NRC
regulates 7 fuel facilities in California, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. NRCâ€™s oversight
of these facilities includes licensing actions, inspection,
enforcement, and assessment of licensee performance.

NRC also authorized Duke Energy Corp. to use four MOX fuel
assemblies, containing uranium and plutonium, as part of the
nuclear fuel at its Catawba nuclear power plant in South
Carolina. The MOX fuel assemblies designed for use in the
Catawba reactor were produced by combining surplus plutonium
from dismantled U.S. nuclear weapons with uranium into a form
that can be used by commercial nuclear power plants. This usage
of the MOX fuel assemblies at Catawba is the first use of MOX
fuel in a commercial power reactor as part of the ongoing
U.S.-Russian plutonium disposition program being implemented by
the DOE.

 

Nuclear Waste Program

 
The NRC has made significant progress on activities related to
protecting public health and safety in relation to disposal of
nuclear waste. A major focus of these activities has been, and
continues to be, ensuring that the agency is prepared to review
a potential application by DOE to construct a deep, geologic,
high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires the NRC to
complete its safety review of a license application, conduct a
public hearing before an independent licensing board, and issue
a decision on construction authorization in three years after
submittal, with a possible extension to four years.

In July of 2004, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated
the 10,000 - year compliance period established by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and incorporated in
NRCâ€™s regulations for Yucca Mountain. As required by the
Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the NRC stands ready to amend its
regulations consistent with any forthcoming changes to the EPA
standards for Yucca Mountain.

In anticipation of a DOE license application for Yucca
Mountain, the NRC has prepared an electronic hearing system to
conduct potential public hearings related to potential
construction of a high-level radioactive waste repository at
Yucca Mountain. An electronic information technology system
database has been developed to catalogue and allow public access
to the vast array of complex documents involved. A hearing
facility has been constructed near Las Vegas, Nevada. 

The NRC staff also has a substantial effort underway in the
area of dry cask storage of spent reactor fuel. Storage and
transport cask designs continue to be reviewed and certified.
Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) continue
to be licensed and inspected. The proposed Private Fuel Storage
ISFSI in Utah is the subject of an ongoing adjudicatory
proceeding. Indeed, our workload related to ISFSIs and dry cask
storage will require continued technical review and licensing
and inspection resources as the number of licensed ISFSIs will
increase from 34 currently to approximately 50 by 2008. The NRC
also began development of the Package Performance Study to
confirm the suitability of spent nuclear fuel transportation
casks. The study will involve testing the integrity of a
full-scale transportation rail cask. In addition, NRC is
supporting a study by the National Academiesâ€™ Board on
Radioactive Waste Management that is examining radioactive
material transportation, with a primary focus on the technical
and societal risk of spent fuel transportation. 

NRC staff is also continuing to make significant progress in
ensuring the safe decommissioning of contaminated sites. During
FY 2004, the staff identified several policy issues requiring
Commission direction that will help expedite safe
decommissioning under NRCâ€™s License Termination Rule. The
Commission has provided the necessary guidance to the staff for
regulatory actions to be taken during FY 2005-2007 under the
staffâ€™s Integrated Decommissioning Improvement Plan. These
regulatory improvements will facilitate decommissioning at
existing sites and should reduce problems at future
decommissioning sites. Program management changes will also be
completed this year that will improve the efficiency and
effectiveness of the program. Finally, we are completing the
oversight of the decommissioning of a number of reactor and
complex materials sites this year.

 

International Program

The NRC also carries out an active international program of
cooperation and assistance involving thirty-eight countries with
which it exchanges nuclear safety information. This program
provides health and safety information and assistance to other
countries to develop and improve regulatory organizations and
overall nuclear safety and security worldwide. The NRC continues
to strongly support multilateral programs for enhancing the
level of nuclear safety worldwide, and serves in leadership
roles on the technical committees that develop and monitor best
practices, and in implementing certain treaties and conventions
that encourage the wider adoption of basic standards and
practices. It is worth noting that we just released the Export
and Import Rulemaking, which will enable the U.S. to meet its
goal with the G-8 to implement the export-import provisions of
the IAEA Code of Conduct by December 2005. 



Human Capital

 
As you know, the NRC is very dependent on a highly skilled and
experienced work force for the effective execution of its
activities. The Commission has developed and implemented a
strategic workforce planning system to identify and monitor its
human capital assets and potential critical skills shortages,
and to promote employee development, succession planning, and
retention. The agency has also implemented two leadership
competency development programs to select high-performing
individuals and train them for future mid-level and senior-level
leadership positions. In addition, the agency has continued to
support a fellowship and scholarship program and identify a
significant number of diverse, highly qualified entry-level
candidates through participation in recruitment events and
career fairs.

NRC has developed an agency wide set of strategic human capital
management strategies to mitigate and close gaps between
available staffing resources and anticipated staffing needs. NRC
is utilizing a variety of recruitment and retention incentives
and offers a wide range of technical and professional training
to attract and retain staff to remain competitive with the
private sector. 

Additionally, planning for and developing the agencyâ€™s future
leaders is a critical part of our approach for managing human
capital. The NRCâ€™s strategic long-range human capital planning
includes: succession planning (both managerial and technical);
partnerships/cooperative ventures with other stakeholders (e.g.,
academia, other agencies, national laboratories, private groups)
to develop talent supply; continuous improvements to recruitment
and training processes, such as the NRC legislative proposals
submitted to the Congress on March 30, 2005; a robust Knowledge
Management Program; and organizational infrastructure
improvements that include the rental of office space,
workstation configuration and equipment, security clearances,
and associated information system needs.

The Commission is very much encouraged by S.858, the bill
recently introduced in the Senate which contains the provisions
that would help the NRC to expand the pool of prospective
employees who have the skills to carry out the agencyâ€™s tasks,
employ former Federal employees who have the skills that are
critical to the performance of the Commissionâ€™s duties, and
encourage institutions of higher education to train their
students in the skills needed to carry out NRCâ€™s work. We
believe these provisions would significantly contribute to
assuring the necessary regulatory expertise required by the NRC
to accomplish its regulatory mission. We strongly urge the
Congress to enact the human capital provisions in S.858 into
legislation.

 

Budget

 
The NRC proposed a FY 2006 budget of $702 million, which is a
budget increase of approximately 5 percent ($32 million) over
the FY 2005 budget for essential activities. This budget
proposal will allow the NRC to continue to protect the public
health and safety, promote the common defense and security, and
protect the environment, while providing sufficient resources to
address increasing personnel costs and new work. Approximately
55 percent ($17.7 million) of the increase is for the nuclear
reactor safety program to strengthen reactor inspection
activities and keep pace with licensing needs of existing
nuclear reactor facilities. An increase of $2.5 million supports
our responsibilities for oversight of certain DOE
waste-incidental-to-reprocessing, as required by Section 3116 of
the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act of FY
2005. The remaining increase is to fund Federal pay raises and
other non-discretionary compensation and benefit increase.

 
The NRCâ€™s FY 2006 budget includes approximately $69.1 million
to support high-level waste activities. These activities include
license application review, hearings, and inspection and
performance confirmation oversight activities, reflecting
DOEâ€™s anticipated license application for the Yucca Mountain
waste repository in December 2005. The Package Performance
Study, to confirm the suitability of spent nuclear fuel
transportation casks, is also included. 

The NRCâ€™s proposed FY 2006 budget request includes $37
million for the NRCâ€™s continuing work on new reactor
licensing, including review of the three early site permit
applications, review of two standard design certification
applications, and development and updating of the agencyâ€™s
regulatory structure to accommodate new, advanced reactor
designs. The demand for new reactor licensing is now expected to
grow more rapidly than previously anticipated and budgeted. As
stated previously, the NRC may be faced with a significant
increase in its workload for new reactor licensing, including
receipt of up to five combined license applications beginning in
2007-2008, which creates additional demands on the NRC. The
Commission notes that the House Appropriations Committee
provided an increase of $21 million over the agencyâ€™s budget
request to address the increased security workload. 

On March 17, 2005, the NRC submitted proposed legislation which
would authorize appropriations for FY 2006. The proposed
legislation included two provisions related to financing the
budget. One would make permanent the NRCâ€™s 90 percent fee
recovery requirement beginning in FY 2006. Absent this
legislation the NRC would only be authorized to collect 33
percent of its budget authority in fees after FY 2005. Another
provision would permit the NRC to assess and collect fees from
other Federal agencies for licensing and inspection services
rather than recovering those costs through annual fees assessed
to private sector licensees. We are pleased that both are
incorporated in the provisions of S. 858.

 

Legislative Needs

The NRC urges the enactment of key legislative provisions
needed to augment its oversight of such facilities and
materials, and to enhance NRCâ€™s effectiveness and efficiency.
As indicated earlier, the Commission strongly supports
legislation that would contribute to the maintenance of the
regulatory expertise required by the NRC to accomplish its
regulatory mission. Most of the provisions in question have
already been incorporated into legislation introduced in the
Senate this year.

 
Several provisions contained in S. 864, the Nuclear Safety and
Security Act of 2005, are particularly important to further
enhance the nuclear safety and security of facilities and
materials that are regulated by the NRC. They are: (1)
authorization of the Commission to allow security personnel
engaged in the protection of designated nuclear facilities,
radioactive material, and other property owned or possessed by
an NRC licensee or certificate holder to possess and use more
robust weapons for carrying out their official responsibilities,
(2) amendment of the Atomic Energy Act to expand the
requirements for fingerprinting, for criminal history record
checks, (3) making unauthorized introduction of weapons into
NRC-regulated facilities a Federal crime, and (4) making it a
Federal crime to sabotage commercial nuclear facilities, fuel,
or Commission-designated material or property not previously
covered by the sabotage section of the Atomic Energy Act
(section 236), and extending coverage to the construction period
of all facilities addressed by that section. 


In addition, the Commission believes that public health and
safety and the promotion of the common defense and security
would be enhanced by NRC regulatory jurisdiction over
accelerator-produced and certain other radioactive material.
Such a provision was included in an omnibus bill that the
Commission submitted to the Congress at the end of March of this
year, but it has not been incorporated into any of the bills
whose provisions are discussed here. 

Various provisions that would enhance NRC effectiveness and
efficiency are contained in Title II of S. 858, the Nuclear Fees
Reauthorization Act of 2005. These include the following: (1)
clarification of the period of the license in the case of a
combined construction and operating license for a nuclear power
plant, (2) elimination of NRCâ€™s antitrust review authority
with respect to pending or future applications for a license to
construct or operate a commercial utilization or production
facility, (3) permanent extension of NRCâ€™s authority to
collect approximately 90 percent of its budget authority in
fees, as noted earlier, (4) authorization of NRC to assess and
collect fees from other Federal agencies for services provided
to them, as noted earlier, and (5) clarification that the
existence of an organizational conflict of interest does not bar
NRC from entering into a contract or other arrangement for work
to be performed at a DOE laboratory, if the Commission
determines that the conflict of interest cannot be mitigated and
that adequate justification exists to proceed with the
arrangement. The NRC strongly supports these provisions.

Key provisions relating to maintaining and improving the
NRCâ€™s regulatory expertise are contained in Title III of S.
858, as noted earlier. Prominent among these are provisions that
would help the NRC to expand the pool of prospective employees
who have the skills to carry out the agencyâ€™s tasks, by
enabling the agency to employ former Federal employees who have
skills that are critical to the performance of the
Commissionâ€™s responsibilities, and encouraging institutions of
higher education to train their students in the skills needed to
carry out NRCâ€™s work. The Commission strongly supports all the
provisions of Title III of S. 858. 

											 	S. 858 also contains provisions that would enhance
NRCâ€™s ability to recruit appropriate individuals for NRC
employment. These provisions would permit NRC to purchase
promotional items of nominal value; provide transportation,
lodging, and subsistence allowances to student interns hired by
the NRC; and establish a scholarship and fellowship program to
enable undergraduate and graduate students, respectively, to
pursue education in science, engineering, or another field of
study that the Commission determines to be critical to the
NRCâ€™s regulatory mission. The Commission also supports the
enactment of these provisions.

 
In addition, the Commission supports the enactment of S. 865,
extending the Price-Anderson Act as it applies to NRC licensees.

Conclusion

The Commission continues to be committed to ensuring the
adequate protection of public health and safety, promoting
common defense and security, and protecting the environment in
the application of nuclear technology for civilian use. We will
continue to address existing and emergency activities within our
mandate from Congress in a pro-active and thorough manner. 

		   
  # # # # #   	 

*****************************************************************
 36 Senator Jeffords: NRC oversight statment

U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
 
Date:   05/26/2005   
      
Statement of Senator James M. Jeffords Oversight on the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission 
  
Thank you Mr. Chairman, today's hearing continues our
ongoing oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I
believe this is the seventh oversight hearing the Subcommittee
has held in the last eight years. Chairman Voinovich, you and
Ranking Member Carper deserve credit for continuing the
commitment to hold these hearings regularly in order to review
the NRCâ€™s activities.

 

	Today, I want to discuss the Commissionâ€™s follow up to an
incident involving missing pieces of fuel rods at the Vermont
Yankee nuclear power plant in my state. The Government
Accountability Office is here today to discuss the results of a
study they completed on this issue at my request. I am pleased
with their work, and with their close attention to the concerns
of the Vermont and Massachusetts delegation in drafting it. I
appreciate too that Chairman Diaz has always been willing to
discuss my concerns with operational and safety issues at
Vermont Yankee with me directly. I also want to say to the
Chairman and all the Commissioners present that I am pleased you
are here today. 



	The mission of the NRC is one of the most vital missions
carried out by the federal government. Regulating the nation's
civilian use of nuclear materials, ensuring adequate protection
of public health and safety when these materials are used or
disposed of, and protecting the environment are all critical. I
want to make myself perfectly clear, and I know the Chairman and
Ranking Member of this Subcommittee share my view: the top
priority for the NRC is safety. There is no greater issue than
safety. I want my Vermont constituents and people across the
country to be safe and it is the NRC's job to guarantee it.

 

	As you are well aware, last year there were some serious
problems at Vermont Yankee which I discussed at length at our
last oversight hearing. Vermont Yankee, operated by Entergy,
discovered that two pieces of radioactive fuel rods were missing
from the plant's storage facilities. Either was capable of
quickly giving a lethal dose of radiation to an unshielded
handler. Though these materials were found to have never left
the plant and were in the spent fuel pool, the search to locate
these materials raises serious questions about whether the NRC
is conducting appropriate oversight of nuclear materials at
individual nuclear plants and whether the federal government
should change its nuclear materials management policies. 



	The loss of fuel rods at Vermont Yankee was the second incident
of missing nuclear fuel at a Northeastern nuclear plant in five
years. When the Millstone incident occurred, the NRC said that
fuel rods had never before gone missing in the history of
commercial nuclear power in the United States. While I know that
the materials at Vermont Yankee were found to be missing due in
part to the new inspection procedures the NRC instituted after
Millstone, the sad fact is that fuel again went missing. We must
improve our nuclear materials accounting system, we must do it
now, and I hope the GAOâ€™s work is the first step in crafting
better materials accounting legislation.

 

	If we are going to be serious about protecting our environment
while providing safe, reliable, and affordable electricity for
all Americans, we need to increase our use of renewables,
improve how we burn fossil fuels, promote energy efficiency, and
make certain that nuclear plants operate well and safely.

 

	Again, I thank Chairman Diaz, the rest of the Commissioners,
and the other witnesses for coming here to discuss these issues.
I look forward to their testimony and to working with my
colleagues.

  # # # # #   	 
*****************************************************************
 37 Post-Crescent: Stalled reactors a drain on supply
 
  Posted May 29, 2005 

PSC OKs We Energies price hike because of closings 

The Associated Press 

MILWAUKEE — Just as state residents get set for what’s typically
the busiest power season of the year, two of Wisconsin’s three
nuclear reactors remain out of service.

 A Point Beach reactor that has been closed since April was
expected to reopen Monday, but Wisconsin Energy Corp. said
Friday that it will remain out of service for a substantial
period while officials figure out how to install a new reactor
cover.

 That news comes about a week after the reopening of the
Kewaunee nuclear plant was delayed for a second time.

 The twin-reactor Point Beach plant and single-reactor Kewaunee
nuclear power plant together supply about a fifth of Wisconsin’s
electricity.

 Wisconsin Energy estimates that replacing the low-cost nuclear
power could cost $400,000 to $500,000 a day during the summer
months and as much as $1 million a day on hot summer days.

 On Friday, the state Public Service Commission said it would
allow Wisconsin Energy subsidiary We Energies to apply to pass
the extra cost to customers.

The closures also raise fears that utilities could be forced to
ask factories to turn off their power if a hot spell hits the
state — something that hasn’t happened for several years, said
Nino Amato, president of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group,
which represents large power plant customers.

 Four new natural gas-fired power plants are scheduled to start
this year, but industry officials say Point Beach and Kewaunee
are still critical to meeting customer demand.

 At Point Beach, Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors have
concerns about the crane that was to be used to lift a new
reactor cover into place, said agency spokesman Jan Strasma.
They’ve asked Nuclear Management Co., the company that runs the
plant, to evaluate what kind of damage would occur if the crane
failed and dropped the cover on the reactor. 

Comment on this Story 

Copyright © 2004 
*****************************************************************
 38 Monticello Times: NRC calls 2004 power plant operations ‘very safe’
                  
www.monticellotimes.com

Sunday, May 29, 2005            
  
Eric O'Link News Editor

All indicators are green–Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant
operated in a safe manner last year.

That was the conclusion of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
which hosted a public meeting at the Monticello Community Center
Thursday to discuss the results of inspections conducted at MNGP
during 2004.

“We had no reason to conduct supplement inspections at this
facility,” said Bruce Burgess, NRC branch chief.

The NRC uses a scale of colors–green, white, yellow and red–to
assess plant performance and rank inspection findings. Green
represents the most favorable conditions/findings and red the
most severe/problematic.

In both plant performance and inspection findings, Monticello
ranked green in all areas.

This means the NRC believes that any concerns or issues that may
have arisen at the plant are minor enough that MNGP may take its
own corrective measures without the NRC conducting supplemental
inspections.

Nationally, 78 of 103 plants– including Monticello–ranked
similarly, in the “licensee response” category. Twenty-one
plants were in a higher “regulatory response” category, meaning
the NRC would perform supplemental inspections at those
facilities. Three plants were classified as “multiple/repetitive
degraded cornerstones,” meaning the NRC was closely monitoring
operations at those plants relative to the majority.

Performance indicator results at plants nationwide were 1,834
green and six white. Nationally, total inspection findings were
778 green, 11 white. There were no yellows or reds in either
case.

In Monticello, Burgess said there were 4,335 hours of inspection
performed last year. This is “slightly above what we’d normally
expect at a facility,” he said, adding that those hours included
major team inspections performed at MNGP last year.

“Our conclusion was that NMC operated the Monticello facility in
a very safe manner and preserved public health and safety,”
Burgess said.

NMC–Nuclear Management Co.–operates the Xcel Energy-owned
Monticello plant. Earlier this year, Xcel filed to renew the
plant’s operating license through 2030. Its current license
expires in 2010.

In addition to the NRC’s positive assessment of the plant,
Burgess said the NRC noted that the Monticello plant needed to
continue to play close attention to engineering and corrective
action.

Tom Palmisano, site vice president at MNGP, told Burgess he
agreed with the NRC’s findings.

Palmisano said quality and effectiveness of engineering remains
“one of our top six priorities in 2005.”

“We’ve found some things, we’ve fixed them and we’ll continue to
really probe for the next several years until I’m satisfied,” he
said. “We haven’t found anything of any serious significance, as
your findings noted, but that’s important to continue to dig
into.”

He added that he had seen improvement in the last
year-and-a-half in quality of regular completeness of current
engineering, but that the plant still had room for improvement.

Palmisano noted corrective actions were also high on the list of
priorities at MNGP.

“Overall, I’m satisfied with where we are in the corrective
action program,” he said, “but we’re looking to continue ways to
improve effectiveness of action.”

Copyright 2005, Monticello Times
*****************************************************************
 39 Globe and Mail: Nuclear not needed
 	 	
theglobeandmail.com
  
 
By DAVE MARTIN 
energy co-ordinator, Greenpeace Canada 
Saturday, May 28, 2005, Page A24 

Toronto -- Re How To Deal Safely With Nuclear Waste (editorial
-- May 26): It is true that much of the radioactivity in
high-level radioactive waste (spent reactor fuel) is gone after
about 100 years, but there are also long-lived radioactive
elements in the waste that remain deadly for much longer. 		 
Want to access this page? Begin below.
 				 	
Not registered with globeandmail.com?
 		


  © Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights
Reserved.    <img
src="http://images.theglobeandmail.com/imagesv3/bgm-site-logo138x


*****************************************************************
 40 Vermont Guardian: State panel withholds approval of Vermont Yankee inspection

By Kathryn Casa | Vermont Guardian 

Posted May 28, 2005 

MONTPELIER  More than a year after it asked federal regulators
to conduct an independent assessment of Vermont Yankee, the
Public Service Board on Friday said it was still not satisfied
that the request had been fulfilled. 

We do not think the process is yet complete, acting board
chairman Michael Dworkin told Entergy at an unusual meeting with
high-level officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
headquarters in Rockville, MD. We hope Entergy wont think its
complete either. 

Dworkins comment came after State Nuclear Engineer Bill Sherman
praised the NRC inspection of VY last summer  the first of four
pilot assessments nationwide that the agency is using to
determine whether it should change the way it reviews the
nations fleet of 104 commercial nuclear reactors. 

I was extremely impressed with the quality of the team, said
Sherman, who accompanied the team of NRC staff inspectors and
independent contractors in August, as they looked at 45 risk
significant components in five VY systems. 

The team uncovered eight problems involving the plant's
electrical power supply and reactor core cooling system. All of
the findings were determined to be of very low safety
significance  because they did not result in the inoperability
of any safety-related equipment, NRC inspection team leader Jeff
Jacobsen told the board. 

Entergy has corrected several of the minor problems and has been
asked to explain to the NRC how it will address four more
significant questions, Jacobsen said. One outstanding issue is
whether operators would have enough time to shut down the plant
during an accident using alternative means before water boiled
away, exposing the radioactive core. 

Ray Shadis, technical advisor to the New England Coalition, a
Brattleboro-based citizens group that is challenging Entergys
proposal to increase power at Vermont Yankee by 20 percent, said
the inspection fell short of what the Public Service Board asked
for last year when it made its approval of the VY uprate
conditional upon an independent assessment. 

Although problems have arisen at a number of other boiling water
reactors like Vermont Yankee that have implemented extended
power uprates, Shadis said the VY inspection failed to look at
the relevant systems in Vernon. 

Whats more, he said the NRC spent just 425 hours over the amount
of time it would have spent during a traditional review of the
plant, which is performed every two years. 

VY spokesman Rob Williams said plant officials have confidence
in the analysis  and therefore we have confidence in moving
forward with the uprate process. 

Shadis said the pilot inspection process has only received a
"lukewarm" endorsement from NRC staff members. A report on the
new process last month states: "The staff's preliminary review
is that the revised approach appears to be an improvement over
previous inspection efforts." 

The document also said that the changes are intended to feed
into our initiative to allow licensees to do self-assessments. 

Jefferson acknowledged after the meeting that the power plant
operators have been asking us to allow them to do assessments
that would take the place of NRC engineering inspections. 

By no means have we decided to allow that, he added. In a
meeting last week, the commissioners urged his staff to expedite
the report on the pilot inspection program, Jefferson said. 

He told the board that he believes the pilot inspection process
is more rigorous than the existing one. Of the four pilots
performed, one uncovered problems that resulted in an
operator-initiated shutdown of a reactor  something that has
never occurred under the existing inspection process, he said. 

Fridays meeting marked the second time NRC inspection team
members have come to Vermont to explain their findings. 
Send us your news tips, a letter to the editor or general
comments.
 
Vermont Guardian
 PO Box 335
 Winooski, VT 05404 
*****************************************************************
 41 WCAX.com: Special NRC panel may hold Vt. hearing on Yankee uprate

May 29, 2005   


MONTPELIER, Vt. A special review panel affiliated with the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission may hold a public hearing in
Vermont on the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's request to boost
its power output.

N-R-C officials say it would be a rare trip out of greater 
Washington for the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.

That panel is set to review a new inspection regimen that the 
N-R-C ran last year at Vermont Yankee. The Vernon reactor was 
selected as one of four plants around the country for a pilot 
study of the new inspections.

The N-R-C did that new inspection in response to a Vermont Public 
Service Board request for an independent engineering assessment 
at Vermont Yankee before it is allowed to boost its power output 
by 20 percent.   

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed. 			 		

Copyright 2001 - 2005 WorldNow and WCAX. All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 42 Guardian Unlimited Max Hastings: Nuclear power is the future
 
Comment 
		
Forget about wind farms. Nuclear power is the future 
		 	
We are energy junkies, but there's a safe, clean answer to our 
cravings          
 		
Max Hastings 
Monday May 30, 2005
The Guardian 		
 		
Now and again, I feel a flash of my old respect for Tony Blair. 
One such moment came recently, when he announced a commitment to 
reopen the debate on nuclear power. If this remark prompts 
action, and does not slip away into the sand like so much 
government rhetoric, then Blair will have done something 
genuinely statesmanlike. 

Contrast his words with those of a junior minister on the radio
a few months ago. This functionary observed complacently that
there was no urgency about nuclear decisions because Britain's
power needs were secure for at least 15 years. What he meant, of
course, was that he would have long since retired to a
comfortable billet in the House of Lords before any lights
started going out. 

One could hear the man's relief at not having to participate in a 
public argument that provokes so much heat and dust. I got a 
taste of this the last time I suggested in the Guardian that 
nuclear power might come to seem the least bad option for 
Britain's energy needs. I almost drowned in cross emails from 
readers, not all called Toynbee or Monbiot, of which the general 
refrain was "Never!" 

Before anything can happen there is a bitter public argument to
be won, yet it is surely worth the winning. Good government, as
distinct from comfortable politics, is about making unwelcome
choices. At present, the very word "nuclear" inspires a
Pavlovian reaction, understandable in this 60th anniversary year
of Hiroshima. 

It is chilling that some military chiefs - though, thank
heavens, no British ones - display a continuing fascination with
the concept of "usable nukes". Terrorists will strive to gain
possession of nuclear devices. Preventing them will remain a
major preoccupation for global security in the 21st century. 

Yet it seems wrong to dismiss nuclear energy merely because of
our revulsion for nuclear weapons. Atomic power has worked.
Today it provides 23% of Britain's energy, which is scheduled to
fall to 7% by 2020 as old stations reach their expiry date. 

Nobody can propose a credible alternative energy source that is
anything like as environmentally acceptable. Anyone who supposes
that wind turbines can meet demand is a mathematical duffer. A
wind farm the size of Dartmoor would be required to provide the
energy of one nuclear plant. In the past, atomic power has been
very costly, but in the future it is reckoned that it will be
cheaper than fossil fuels if oil prices exceed $28 a barrel (the
current price is $50). 

Opponents of nuclear power are on good ground when they point to
the incompetence, and propensity for deceit, of those who have
managed the British atomic industry over the past half-century.
I remember a Tory minister saying in exasperation 15 years ago:
"It is depressing to stand up in the House of Commons and
broadcast explicit assurances from our nuclear 'experts' one
day, only to find them discredited the next." 

If Britain builds a new generation of nuclear generators, we can
be confident that they will overrun cost predictions and there
will be mishaps. A sceptic might explode and say: "You can't use
a word like 'mishap' to describe a nuclear accident!" Yet all
industries suffer accidents. Almost 50 years of worldwide
nuclear power generation has killed far fewer people than the
oil or mining industries in the same period. Britain's surviving
coalpits suffer an annual 11 deaths per 100,000, and twice as
many miners die in Russia. The Piper Alpha oil rig disaster
killed 167. 

The Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986 represented a nadir of
technical failure, and is thought to have been as bad as a
nuclear accident can get. Some 45 people perished - but
Greenpeace predicts that between 30,000 and 50,000 more will die
over the next half-century from radiation-related diseases. 

Yet Greenpeace is more famous for its enthusiasm and media savvy
than the reliability of its science, which is often lamentable.
Environmentalism and intellectual rigour seldom march together.
Other independent studies of Chernobyl forecast a fraction of
the fatalities anticipated by Greenpeace. After the American
nuclear leak at Three Mile Island, there were no deaths at all. 

All forms of human activity, especially industrial, are
vulnerable to accidents. Few people refuse to fly because there
are occasional ghastly crashes. The challenge is to measure risk
intelligently, rather than emotionally. 

The disposal of nuclear waste is a serious issue because of the
twin risks of leakage and terrorist acquisition of fissionable
material. But such waste has been stored in Britain since 1950.
Many other nations generate nuclear power - 30 plants are under
construction, of which nine are in India, four in China, three
in Japan and one in South Korea. It seems mistaken to suppose
that Britain's stock of nuclear waste will somehow be uniquely
vulnerable. 

Those who still turn aside in revulsion should consider soaring
world energy needs. Demand is believed to have grown by 50%
since 1980. The United Nations suggests that it will increase by
a further 85% by 2020. We are all energy junkies. We may argue
about means of satisfying the global craving, but it seems
wildly fanciful to suppose that it can be met by wind farms. 

Need is causing a lot of people to think again about their gut
resistance. Even Germany, with its powerful Green party, is
thinking hard about its decision to end nuclear generation. In
1988 Sweden started to phase out its 11 nuclear power stations.
Today, however, the rising price of fossil fuels, together with
a mounting enthusiasm for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, has
caused a start ling change of public sentiment. A recent poll
suggests that 80% of Swedes now favour nuclear power. The
country is building a new repository for nuclear waste. 

Ask British people today "Are you in favour of nuclear power?"
and many will answer "No". The challenge is to oblige people to
answer different questions: "Are you happy to see British
nuclear generating capacity fall, while greenhouse-gas targets
are missed?" 

If they find this line opaque it might be rephrased as: "Do you
mind your lights, heating, TV, cooker and freezer going off?"
That is what has been happening in California, where nobody
bothered to think responsibly about the state's rising energy
requirements until air conditioners started dying. 

I simply do not believe the Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth
lobbyists who suggest that renewable sources can meet future
needs. Nor do I want to live in a landscape dominated by
turbines. 

The anti-nuclear lobby is so impassioned and the public's
instinctive inertia so great that it may be years before a new
commitment is made to nuclear power. It takes at least a decade
to design and build a power station, and the Sizewell B planning
inquiry lasted six years. Every British business and household
will pay for delays in formulating and executing a new policy.
But I will bet my socks that half a century from now our
children will depend heavily on nuclear power to keep their
lights burning - because there will be nothing else that is
clean, affordable and works. 
	
[UP] 

      Guardian Unlimited ¿ Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
*****************************************************************
 43 Japan Times: Agency drawing up plan to boost nuclear security

  Sunday, May 29, 2005   

A government agency has begun compiling measures to protect
nuclear power facilities from attack and will draw up scenarios
of possible terrorist assaults on each of the facilities,
according to the agency's officials.

 The move by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's
Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency marks the first time the
government is considering terrorist attacks on nuclear
facilities as part of its safety measures.

 The plan is aimed at reinforcing protection of nuclear material
in response to heightened concern over terrorism following the
attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, the officials
said.

 The agency will put together the envisioned scenarios by the
end of this year with the cooperation of the National Police
Agency and the Japan Coast Guard, they said.

 The scenarios include situations such as people with automatic
rifles entering a nuclear power plant to destroy it and people
breaking into a facility to seize the central control room.

 For each facility, the agency will outline the number of
terrorists, their aim, the weapons they possess and their
assault capability based on consideration of the facility's
features, including its landscape.

 But contingencies such as a ballistic missile attack, landing
of armed parties in Japan and air raids are not included among
the situations, the officials said.

 The agency will present the scenarios to the operators of the
facilities and ask them to come up with protection measures that
would allow them to discover the terrorists, notify authorities,
delay the attackers and, if necessary, safely shut down the
facility, they said.

 The facilities covered by the measure include nuclear power
plants, the fast-breeder reactor Monju and the Fugen
converter-type nuclear reactor plant in Fukui Prefecture,
nuclear reprocessing plants and some nuclear research and
experiment facilities, the officials said.

 The International Atomic Energy Agency recommended in 1999 that
member states come up with scenario-based measures. Japan is
expediting its efforts after the Diet passed a bill this month
to strengthen protection of nuclear material.

 The Japan Times: May 29, 2005
(C) All rights reserved 

*****************************************************************
 44 Mos News: Terrorists Focused on Nuclear Facilities in Russia — Report -
                       
NEWS - MOSNEWS.COM
 
Kola nuclear power plant in far northern Russia / Photo from
www.kolanpp.ru 

Created: 28.05.2005 12:20 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 12:34 MSK 

MosNews

Efforts by the U.S. and Russia to prevent Russian nuclear
materials from falling into the hands of terrorists remain
slowed by bureaucratic red tape and a lack of urgency, a report,
released by a research group affiliated with Harvard University,
Nuclear Threat Initiative, says.

In 2004 U.S.-funded work to secure and account for Russian
material that could be used in nuclear weapons was completed for
only 4 percent of it that raised the total secured to 26
percent, the group was quoted by The Washington Post.

Despite some heightened security procedures, many Russian
nuclear research sites still frequently have doors propped open
for convenience, intrusion sensors turned off because of false
alarms and guards patrolling with unloaded weapons, the report
said.

According to the research, many terrorism experts say al Qaeda
and other terrorist groups have focused for years on lightly
secured nuclear facilities in Russia and other states in the
former Soviet Union as potential sources for equipment and
material needed to assemble an atomic weapon, while
“on-the-ground progress in securing, consolidating and
eliminating nuclear stockpiles in the last year remained slow”. 

The report also cited the case of a Russian businessman who in
2003 offered $750,000 to employees at a top Russian nuclear arms
laboratory in exchange for stolen weapons-grade plutonium
intended for a foreign buyer. Matthew Bunn, co-author of the
report, stressed that the researchers “have no basis for
confidence that there are people in the Russian (nuclear) system
who would not be tempted by $750,000”

Nevertheless, the threat initiative study noted that
considerable progress is being made in Russia. Starting with
President Vladimir Putin, many Russian leaders now see the
extraordinary danger posed by inadequately secured nuclear
materials and weapons, it said.

But serious problems persist. In March, the commander of
Interior Ministry troops for Moscow Yevgeny Baryaev said that
seven key facilities there had functioning security equipment,
while 39 had “serious shortcomings.” He added that half the
perimeters of these restricted sites lacked fences, the report
said. 

Nuclear Threat Initiative is as research group, founded by media
tycoon Ted Turner and former senator Sam Nunn and sponsored by
Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. 
 
Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM
*****************************************************************
 45 DU: A Scientific Perspective
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 12:34:25 -0500 (CDT)

 
From AxisofLogic.com

United States
DU: A Scientific Perspective/ An Interview With LEUREN MORET, Geoscientist
By W. Leon Smith/Nathan Diebenow
May 13, 2005, 07:20

Interview Conducted
By W. Leon Smith
and Nathan Diebenow

Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who works almost around the clock
educating citizens, the media, members of parliaments and Congress
and other officials on radiation issues. She became a whistleblower
in 1991 at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab after witnessing fraud
on the Yucca Mountain Project. She is currently working as an
independent citizen scientist and radiation specialist in communities
around the world, and contributed to the U.N. subcommission
investigating depleted uranium. According to Wikipedia online
encyclopedia, Moret testified at the International Criminal Tribunal
for Afghanistan in Japan in 2003, presented at the World Depleted
Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany, and spoke at the
World Court of Women at the World Social Forum in Bombay, India,
in January 2004.

THE INTERVIEW

ICONOCLAST: What are the latest developments with reducing depleted
uranium exposures on U.S. troops?

MORET: A young veteran named Melissa Sterry of Connecticut has
introduced a bill into the Connecticut Legislature requiring
independent testing of returning Afghan and Gulf War veterans going
back to 2001. She said that she did it because shes sick, and her
friends are dead, and thats from serving in the 2003 conflict. I
have been following the bill and talking to her. Yesterday, she
testified twice at the United Nations. I said, Why dont we get this
bill all over the U.S. in state legislatures because it informs the
public and get the local media to cover it.

The U.S. has blocked any accountability at international and national
levels. Theres a total cover-up just like with Agent Orange, the
atomic veterans, MKULTRA, the mind control experiments the CIA did.
This is more of the same, but the issue is much, much worse because
the genetic future of all those contaminated is effected. Now vast
regions around our world, as well as our atmosphere, are contaminated
with the depleted uranium. Theyve used so much. Its the equivalent
number of atoms, as the Japanese professor calculated it, to over
400,000 Nagasaki bombs that has been released into the atmosphere.
Thats really an underestimate.

I went to Louisiana in April. I was invited to speak at the University
of New Orleans for three days. One of the veterans asked me to be
in their April 19 protest and rally through the City of New Orleans.
He took the Connecticut bill straight to the Legislature, and he
got two legislators to sponsor it, and he said, Just whiteout the
name Connecticut and write in Louisiana on the bill. Youre not going
to believe it. It passed 101 to 0 yesterday in the Louisiana House.

I want you to write about it because we want it (the DU testing
bill) in Texas. Nevada is going to introduce it. Congressman Jim
McDermott is going to put it into the Washington legislature. We
want to get the governor of Montana to do it because hes the first
governor to demand his National Guard be returned. I think half of
them are back. He said, I need them in the state.

The DU issue is just really, really, really, really so awful. I
dont think theres any greater tragedy in the history of the world
in what theyve done.

ICONOCLAST: Is there a danger of depleted uranium, being used in
weaponry over there, spreading by air over here?

MORET: The atmosphere globally is contaminated with it. Its completely
mixed in one year. Im an expert on atmospheric dust. Im a geoscientist,
a geologist, and thats what I studied and did my research on. Its
really a fascinating subject. We have huge dust storms that are a
million square miles and transport millions of tons of dust and
sand every year around the world.

The main centers of these dust storms are the Gobi Desert in China,
which is where the Chinese did atmospheric testing, so thats all
contaminated with radiation, and it gets transported right over
Japan, and it comes straight across the Pacific and dumps all its
sand and dust on the U.S., North America. Its loaded with radioactive
isotopes, soot, pesticides, chemicals, pollution  everything is in
it  fungi, bacteria, viruses.

The Sahara Desert is another huge dust center, and it goes up all
over Europe and straight across the Atlantic, to the Caribbean, and
up the East Coast. Of course, you get it in Texas with those
hurricanes. They all originate in the Sahara Desert.

The third region is the Western United States, which is where the
Nevada test site is located. We did 1,200 nuclear weapons tests
there, so all this radiation that is already there, which is bad
enough, has caused a global cancer epidemic since 1945. All of that
radiation was the equivalent of 40,000 Nagasaki bombs. Were talking
about 10 times more.

In April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect
global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.

Infant mortality is going up again all over the world. This is an
indicator of the level of radioactive pollution.

When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963,
the infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal.

Now they are going up again. Its the global pollution with this
radiation.

ICONOCLAST: I had one of our correspondents send me a series of
photographs of the Al-Asad dust storm in Iraq on April 28.

MORET: That dust is what Im talking about.

ICONOCLAST: In the picture you can see a gigantic wall of sand.

MORET: I have 16 pictures of that storm. Theyre posted with photos
from Iraqi doctors of the children of people with cancer and leukemia.
So what did you think of that dust storm?

ICONOCLAST: I thought it was really dramatic.

MORET: It remobilizes all the radiation, but those are the larger
chunks. The DU burns at such high temperatures. Its a pyroforic
metal which means it burns. The bullets and big caliber shells are
actually on fire when they come out of the gun barrel because they
are ignited by the friction in the gun barrel. Seventy percent of
the DU metal becomes a metal vapor. Its actually a radioactive gas
weapon and a terrain contaminant.

Ill email you the URL of the 1943 memo to General Leslie Grove under
the Manhattan Project. Its the blueprint for depleted uranium. They
dropped the atomic bombs, but they did not use the DU weapons because
they thought they were too horrific.

Ive toured and gone all over Japan with a pediatrician in Basra and
an oncologist, a cancer specialist. These poor doctors  their whole
families are dying of cancer. He has 10 members of his family with
cancer now that hes treating, and this is just from Gulf War I.
Theyve used much, much, much more in 2003. All over the whole
country.

ICONOCLAST: What can soldiers expect when they come home?

MORET: If they were in Bradley Fighting Vehicles, theyre coming
home with rectal cancer from sitting on ammunition boxes. The young
women are reporting terrible problems with endometriosis. Thats the
lining of the uterus malfunctioning, and they just bleed and bleed
and bleed. Some of them have uterine cancer  18 and 19 and 20 year
olds.

The Army will not even diagnose it. They send them back to the
battlefields. They wont treat them or diagnose them. A group of 20
soldiers pushed from Kuwait to Baghdad in 2003 in all the fighting.
Eight of those 20 soldiers have malignancies.

ICONOCLAST: Does exposure to depleted uranium effect their psychological
background when they come home?

MORET: Depleted uranium are these particles that form at very high
temperatures. They are uranium oxides that are insoluble. They are
at least 100 times smaller than a white blood cell, so when the
soldiers breathe, they inhale them. The particles go through the
nose, go through the olfactory and into the brain, and it messes
up their cognitive abilities, thought processes.

It damages their mood-control mechanism in the brain. Four soldiers
at Fort Bragg came back from Afghanistan, and within two months,
those four had murdered their wives. This is part of the damage to
the brain from the radiation and the particles.

The soldiers from Gulf War I in a group of 67 soldiers who came
back, they had DU in their equipment, in their clothes, in their
bodies, in their semen, and they had normal babies before they went
over there to war. They came back, and the VA did a study. Of 251
Gulf War I veterans in Mississippi, in 67 percent of them, thier
babies born after the war were deemed to have severe birth defects.
They had brains missing, arms and legs missing, organs missing.
They were born without eyes. They had horrible blood diseases. Its
horrific.

If you want to look at something, Life magazine did a photo essay
which is still on the Internet. Its called The Tiny Victims of
Desert Storm. You should look at that  oh, my God, the post-Gulf
War babies playing with their brothers and sisters who are normal.

Basically, its like smoking crack, only youre smoking radioactive
crack. It goes straight into the blood stream. Its carried all
throughout the body into the bones, the bone marrow, the brain. It
goes into the fetus. Its a systemic poison and a radiological poison.

ICONOCLAST: What about the people in the United States that are
here? You say that DU is being mixed and spread globally?

MORET: Yes, its being mixed globally. Were getting secondary smoke.
Its the secondary smoke effect. You know the people who inhabit a
room with smokers? They are getting that secondary smoke, and so
are we.

ICONOCLAST: Is that secondary smoke getting thicker as we speak?

MORET: Yeah, the concentration of the depleted uranium particles
in the atmosphere all around the globe is increasing. There are
indications that the U.S. will go in June and bomb the heck out of
Iran. Were monitoring the U.S. Army ammunition factories. They have
very large orders for those huge bunker buster bombs that have 5,000
lbs. of DU in the warhead.

ICONOCLAST: So the prognosis for America isnt really good?

MORET: No, its really bad.

ICONOCLAST: And if this continues then?

MORET: Its going to kill off the worlds population. It already is,
and it doesnt just effect people. It effects all living systems.
The plants, the animals, the bacteria. It effects everything.

ICONOCLAST: So the things that we eat for instance, if they have
DU in them, then well just get it in our systems, and so were
polluting the oceans, so that could effect all marine life?

MORET: Yes, its in the air, water, and soil. The half-life of DU,
Uranium 238, is 4.5 billion years the age of the Earth.

ICONOCLAST: With the damage thats been done to this point, can we
turn back? We cant clean it up?

MORET: Theres no way to clean it up. What happens is these tiny
particles float around the Earth. There are still plutonium and
uranium floating around the Earth from bomb testing. These particles
are so tiny that molecules bumping into them keep them lofted in
the air, and so the only way for them to get out of the atmosphere
is rain, snow, fog, pollution, which will clear them out of the air
and deposit them in the environment. What happens is the surface
of these particles gets wetted by the moisture in the air. They
come down and land on stuff and stick to it like a glue. You cant
ever get the particles off whatever theyre sticking to because have
you ever put a drop of water on a microscope slide and then put
another one on top of it? Can you pull those apart?

ICONOCLAST: No.

MORET: Okay, thats the same effect that happens to radioactive
particles. Once they are removed from the atmosphere, they stick
to any surfaces they land on. In a way they are removed from
circulation from the atmosphere. You cant wash them off. If it keeps
raining or theyre in a creek, you know, if theyre on rocks or stones
or something in a creek, they wont even wash off.

You didnt know it was this bad, did you?

ICONOCLAST: No, I knew it was bad, but I thought it was fairly
isolated.

MORET: No. What is over there (in Iraq) is over here in about four
days. I dont know if you followed Chernobyl. That big bubble of
radiation went around and around the world, but this is dust. It
becomes a part of atmospheric dust. Like the dust storm you saw in
that photo, it goes everywhere.

ICONOCLAST: Is it in the upper levels of the atmosphere or the lower
levels?

MORET: Its in lower orbital space.

They brought the Mir spacecraft back down to Earth when they got
done using it, and there was something called a space midge which
covered the electronics on the outside of the spacecraft and protected
it from radiation that comes from the sun because electronics are
real vulnerable to radiation. They analyzed the surface of that
space net and found uranium and uranium decayed products which they
said came from atmospheric testing or burned up spacecraft with
nuclear materials or nuclear reactors on board. Uranium can also
come from supernovas, but they thought that the most likely sources
were atmospheric testing and the nuclear materials we put in space.

ICONOCLAST: Essentially then, youre saying that were conducting a
nuclear war.

MORET: Yes, and thats exactly what it is. Weve conducted four nuclear
wars since 1991. Yeah, these are nuclear wars. DU is a nuclear
weapon.

ICONOCLAST: From the point of view of a scientist, what needs to
happen to correct this?

MORET: Well, we need to stop the use of it. Weve built an international
movement to stop the use, the manufacture, the storage, the sales,
and the deployment of depleted uranium weapons.

ICONOCLAST: Are the munitions we sell to other countries contained
with depleted uranium?

MORET: We have. In 1968 the first depleted uranium weapons systems
that we found a patent for suddenly appeared in the U.S. patent
office. It was for the Navy. It was sort of a Gatling gun style
weapon system that you mounted on ships. It rapidly fires like 2,500
bullets a minute. Its over 3,000 now. Theyve improved the design.
Then in 1973, we gave depleted uranium weapons systems to the
Israelis and supervised their use. They used them in the Arab-Israeli
war and completely wiped out the Arabs in five days. Then the show
was on the road. That was the first actual battlefield demonstration
of this new weapon system.

Hughes Aircraft developed the full-length system which is for the
Navy. Thats the Gatling gun system. They still use it. That was
produced in 1974 and tested. Within six months the U.S. government
had sold the DU weapons system to 12 entities which included many
branches of the U.S. military and other counties. Weve sold DU
weapons systems to about  we dont know exactly for sure  its been
about 12 or 17 countries. The good news is that normally such a
weapons system that effective would have been sold to 80, 100, or
120 countries by now. But because of the radiological, biological,
and environmental hazard, countries were not only afraid to buy it,
the ones who did buy it are afraid to use it. The only countries
we know that have used DU are Britain, the U.S., and Israel.

The United Nations in 1996 passed a resolution that depleted uranium
weapons are weapons of mass destruction, and they are illegal under
all international laws and treaties.

In 2001, the European Parliament passed a resolution on DU. What
happened is that the NATO forces went into Yugoslavia in 1998 and
99 and flew 39,000 bombing runs and completely bombed Yugoslavia
into radioactive rubble. Germany and the U.S. made the most money
on the destruction of Yugoslavia, and they made sure that countries
that didnt know about the DU, that the peacekeepers from those
countries like from Italy and Portugal, were sent to the most
contaminated regions in Yugoslavia. Germans and Americans didnt
send their own troops into those areas. They were in the least
contaminated areas. These poor soldiers from other countries came
back and died within weeks or in a couple of days or months. The
parents in Portugal and Italy are furious and went to the Parliament
and media, and there was just a huge media storm of articles about
DU.

The cat was out of the bag because of the 1998 NATO invasion of
Yugoslavia. The cat was out of the bag, but Japanese troops have
been sent into Somawa. Theyre self-defense forces. It was the most
contaminated area where the heaviest fighting happened in Iraq. We
can expect those soldiers to be really, really sick.

ICONOCLAST: What about Iraq itself? Whats been done thus far?

MORET: Its uninhabitable. The whole country. Yugoslavia, Iraq, and
Afghanistan are completely uninhabitable.

ICONOCLAST: But people live there, so theyre going to live there
suffering?

MORET: Well, you can see from the birth defects and the illnesses
that it is pretty severe. Each year the number of birth defects and
illnesses will rise because of the total contamination levels in
all living things will increase because they are breathing that air
and drinking water and eating the food from contaminated soils. Its
just a slow death sentence. The same with Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Depleted uranium is a very, very, very effective biological weapon.
This is the primary purpose for using it. Marion Falk (a retired
chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years
at Lawrence Livermore lab), who is the Manhattan Project scientist
I work with, taught me pretty much everything about radiation and
particles and DU. He said the purpose of weapons used by the military
is not only to injure and kill the enemy soldiers, but the purpose
is to kill, maim, and disease the civilian population because it
reduces the productivity of a country and pretty soon a lot of their
resources are going to be used for taking care of sick people. They
will have fewer and fewer healthy workers.

Of course, once you cause mutation in the DNA, that damage is passed
on to future generations of that affected person or animal or plant.
DNA does not repair itself.

ICONOCLAST: So the mutations would be probably destructive moreso
than constructive.

MORET: Oh, the mutations are causing those birth defects.

ICONOCLAST: Theyre not evolutionary diseases?

MORET: No, they are evolutionary. They are inherited by all future
generations and passed on. Its like if you have red hair and all
of your future generations will have that gene.

ICONOCLAST: So if I had a precondition to heart disease because of
the radiation, then the generation that would come after me would
have the same problem?

MORET: Well, if you damage the cell or parts of the cell or functioning
of cells, that doesnt necessarily damage the DNA. There are two
kinds of damage: one damages the cells of the living organism, and
that may not be passed on, but if you damage the DNA in the egg or
the sperm, that is passed on to all future generations.

ICONOCLAST: So the guys coming back from the war, their sperm is
probably going to be

MORET: Damaged. Yes. They also have depleted uranium in their semen.
When theyre intimate with their partners, they internally contaminate
them with depleted uranium. The women become sick themselves. They
have depleted uranium in their bodies, and there is something called
burning syndrome. Just absolutely horrible. You can read about it
in an article by David Rose in the December Vanity Fair. Its on the
Internet.

A friend of mine is the widow of a Canadian Gulf War veteran. David
Rose interviewed her, and she griped about the burning semen. She
said, I had 20 condoms full of frozen peas in my freezer at all
times, and after we were intimate, I would insert one into my vagina,
and that is the only way I could bear the pain from the burning
semen. And it goes through condoms, too.

ICONOCLAST: Gosh, durn!

MORET: Yeah, you should see the high school classes when I talk
about the burning semen and the internal contamination. The girls
mouths go into little round Os, and the boys start panicking because
theyre like, Ill never get sick! (laughs) The name of this article
is Weapons of Self-Destruction.

ICONOCLAST: How much DU will it take to kill off all known life on
this planet?

MORET: The amount of radiation released is certainly going to have
a very, very profound global impact, and were already seeing infant
mortality increasing globally. The fetus is the most susceptible
to radiation damage because all the cells are rapidly dividing, the
limbs and the bodies developing, so when you start introducing toxic
chemicals and radiation, it really damages the natural process of
fetal development.

The reason they were able to convince the Senate to sign the partial
test ban treaty in 1963 was because of the increase in infant
mortality. It had been dropping and declining two or three percent
for quite a long time each year because of better prenatal care and
educating mothers.

Infant mortality started going up after the bombs were dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially in the 50s when the big bomb
testing started.

By 1963, it was really obvious that the bomb testing globally was
having a real impact on the unborn. They signed the partial test
ban treaty. Russia and the U.S. stopped atmospheric testing, and
the infant mortality rate started going down right away. Theyre
going up again now. This is global radioactive pollution, and how
long it would take to eliminate all life is something nobody knows,
but the depleted uranium is a very, very effective biological weapon.

There are two purposes for the military use of weapons. One is to
destroy the enemy soldiers, and the other, which is just as important,
is to destroy the enemy civilian population. By causing illnesses
and disease, long lingering illnesses really impact the productivity
and the economy of a country. It was Chernobyl and other nuclear
disasters that actually destroyed the Soviet Union because the
former Soviet Union is very, very sick from all the radiation that
was released. They were much more sloppier than we were.

I have a World Health Organization world health survey which they
published in the Journal of American Medical Association last June.
The impact of atmospheric testing is very, very apparent by the
percentage of population in each country they investigated for some
form of mental illness. For instance, Japan is 8.8 percent. Nigeria
is very low  4.7 percent. They have almost no radiation in Nigeria.
In the Ukraine where they had the Chernobyl accident, it is 20.4
percent. Spain is at 9.2 percent. Italy is 8.2 percent. Its pretty
low because they dont have nuke plants. France is 75 percent reliant
on nuclear power, so you have mental illness in 18.4 percent of the
population. Mexico is at 12.2 percent, and the United States is at
26.3 percent  the highest rate of mental illness in the world.

And George Bush and his siblings were all exposed in utero to bomb
testing fallout in the United States. He had a toddler sister who
died of leukemia when she was about three.

I worked with a group called the Radiation And Public Health Project.
Their website is <www.radiation.org>. We are all radiation specialists,
well-known scientists, and independent scientists. Weve collected
6,000 baby teeth around nuclear power plants and measured the
radiation in them, and one of our members is the neighbor of the
women who worked with all of the Bush children, including President
Bush himself, because they had severe learning disabilities.

ICONOCLAST: How do we know that the Bush children were exposed?

MORET: By the year of their birth. The year they were carried by
their mother. You have to look at how much bomb testing material
was released into the atmosphere, and theres a direct correlation
to the decline in SAT scores for all teenagers in the U.S. to the
amount of radiation that was released into the atmosphere the year
their mother was carrying them. These are delayed effects of radiation
exposure in utero.

ICONOCLAST: So they were living in Connecticut, but they were still
feeling the effects of the radiation in Nevada?

MORET: Two years ago the U.S. government admitted that every single
person living in the United States between 1957 and 1963 was
internally exposed to radiation. So for any pregnant woman during
those years, her fetus was exposed.

ICONOCLAST: What type of radiation levels are we talking about?

MORET: Its low levels, and the main pathways are drinking water and
dairy products. It even killed the baby fish in the Atlantic.
Strontium-90 is a man-made isotope that comes out of nuclear bombs
and nuclear reactors. They measured the levels of strontium-90 in
milk in Norway from the 1950s up until the 1970s, and they measured
the decline in the fishing catch in that same period, and as the
strontium-90 increased in the milk in Norway, fishing catches
declined.

By 1963, when the U.S. tested a nuclear bomb almost every day (they
did 250 tests in one year because the treaty was going to be signed),
the fishing catch declined by 50 percent. In the Pacific, it declined
60 percent because there was Russian, Chinese, French, and U.S.
testing in the Pacific.

ICONOCLAST: So were still eating those contaminated fish today. Has
the genetic code been changed?

MORET: The oceans are getting whatever is getting rained down,
snowed down, or fogged down from the atmosphere. Its getting into
the oceans. This big frog die-off, which is global, is certainly
related to the radiation in the rainwater. Its a global nuclear
holocaust. It effects all living things. Thats why they call it
omnicide, which means it kills all living things  the plants, the
animals, the bacteria. Everything.

ICONOCLAST: You think we ought to have the Weather Channel report
on the current sand storm conditions in Iraq so we can prepare four
days in advance for the radiation?

MORET: Ill tell you what I did when 9/11 happened.

I called all the doctors with Radiation And Public Health Project,
and I said, Get out of town, and dont come back until it has rained
three times. One lived 12 miles downwind from the Pentagon. She
went out on her balcony with her geiger counter. I said, Get that
geiger counter out of your purse. We had just done a press conference
in San Francisco, and I knew she had it in her purse. Well, the
radiation levels were 8-10 times higher than background.

We called the EPA, HAZMAT, FBI, and said, Get all those emergency
response workers suited up. They need to be protected. Two days
after 9/11, the EPA radiation expert for that region called back
and said, Yup, the Pentagon crash rubble was radioactive, and we
believe its depleted uranium, but were not worried about that. Its
only harmful if its inhaled.

He said, Were worried about the lead solder in the plane. Well, you
know whats in Tomahawk missiles? They have depleted uranium warheads.
The radioactive crash rubble contaminated with DU is evidence of a
DU warhead.

ICONOCLAST: I did not think about that, but going back to my original
question: Should the Weather Channel report for us on the toxic
dust storms in Iraq?

MORET: But how could people get away from them? These dust storms
are a million square miles. Theyre huge, and they come right across
the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and Texas coast line, and right up the
East Coast. There are people who are going to leave the state every
time theres a hurricane Its in the food, drinking water, dairy
products, and then the problem with Uranium 238, which is 99.39
percent DU, is that it decays in over 20 steps into other radioactive
isotopes.

Thats why I call it the Trojan Horse. Its the weapon that keeps
giving. It keeps killing. This is like smoking radioactive crack.
It goes right in your nose. It crosses the olfactory bulb into your
brain. Its a systemic poison. It goes everywhere. These particles
that form at very high temperatures  5,000-10,000 degrees C  are
nanoparticles. They are a 10th of a micron or smaller. A 10th of a
micron is 100 times smaller than a white blood cell. They get picked
up in the lipids and probably the cholesterol and go right through
the cell membranes of the cell. They screw up the cell processes.
They screw up the signaling between the cells because the cells all
talk to each other and coordinate what theyre doing. It messes up
brain function.

ICONOCLAST: Do you know what Iraq was like before the first Gulf
War?

MORET: Iraq prior to the 1991 Gulf War was the most advanced in the
entire Middle East. They had scrupulous databases of the health
problems and disease rates, which is why the U.S. bombed all of the
offices in the Ministry of Health. We destroyed all those records
so that a pre-Gulf War health base could not be established to show
how much these diseases have increased. This would concern the U.S.
in terms of compensation for war crimes.

In these horrible U.N. sanctions, they (the Iraqis) could never get
all of the protocol medicine for the treatment of leukemia. They
(the U.N.) would say, These steps of the leukemia treatment were
components in weapons, so you cant have that. They never gave the
people the full proper protocols in the areas of treatment they
needed to get rid of the leukemia. It hid the effects of the depleted
uranium because the children were starving. They had malnutrition.
They had the healthiest population in the Middle East (prior to
Gulf War I).

ICONOCLAST: Lets talk about the children of Iraq.

MORET: After the Gulf War, they had maybe one baby a week born with
birth defects in the hospitals in Basra. Now they are having 10-12
a day. The levels of uranium are increasing in the population every
year. Every day, people are eating and drinking while the whole
environment is contaminated. Just what youd expect. There are more
babies born with birth defects, and the birth defects are getting
more and more severe.

An Iraqi doctor told me that babies are being born now that are
lumps of flesh. She said that they dont have heads or legs or arms.
Its just a lump of flesh. This also happened to populations that
were not removed from islands in the Pacific when the bomb tests
occurred. Basically, governments were using them as guinea pigs.

ICONOCLAST: So all the countries that were equipped with nuclear
weapons are guilty of those atrocities.

MORET: They were all doing it. France, Russia. China, and the U.S.
And Im not sure if Britain did bomb testing. They were real low key
about it.

ICONOCLAST: Where are the radiation hot spots in the United States?

MORET: In the United States, it would be within a 100 miles of
nuclear power plants. We have 110 nuclear power plants in the U.S.
We have the most of any country in the world, but only a 103 are
operating. Almost all of the entire East Coast.

What we did was we took government data from the Centers of Disease
Control on breast cancer deaths between 1985 and 1989. Anywhere
from within a 100 miles of a nuclear power plant is where two-thirds
of all breast cancer deaths occurred in the U.S. between 1985 and
1989.

Its also around the nuclear weapons laboratories. That would be Los
Alamos in New Mexico, the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Lab in Idaho,
and Hanford in Washington State, which is where they got the plutonium
for all the bombs. They contaminated the entire Columbia River
watershed and almost the whole state of Washington.

It gets into the water and into the plants and into the vegetation.
If you eat clams or mussels or crabs or things like that, even
certain kinds of fish that eat off of the mud at the bottom of the
river, you have much higher levels of radiation in your tissues.
It depends on each person and on how healthy they are, but this man
from Washington State died suddenly. He was in his late 40s. They
did an autopsy, and he was full of radioactive zinc. They went,
Where in the world did he get this? It only comes from nuclear bombs
and nuclear reactors. They studied his diet and discovered he loved
to eat oysters. They found out where he bought his oysters and found
the oyster beds. They were 200 miles off shore, from Washington
State. The radiation was being carried off out to sea from the
coastline. It was passing over this oyster bed. The oysters were
just gobbling them up.

ICONOCLAST: What are the symptoms of DU poisoning?

MORET: Soldiers on the battlefield have reported a metallic taste
in their mouth. Thats the actual taste of the uranium metal. Then
within 24-48 hours, soldiers on the battlefield have reported that
they felt sick. They start getting muscle aches, and they lose
energy. Some of them came back incontinent. In other words, in adult
diapers.

One woman reported that the first night home, she wanted to be
intimate with her husband, but she had absolutely no feeling. She
couldnt feel anything from the waist down. This particulate matter
damages the neuromuscular system, the nerves; it just goes everywhere.
And theres no treatment for it. These particles are very, very
insoluble, so they cant even dissolve in body fluids, so they can
be excreted from the body. Then they keep releasing. Even when
uranium decays, it turns into another radioactive isotope. So its
a particle that just sits there shooting bullets until you die.

Another problem is that soldiers have crumbling teeth. Teeth just
start falling apart. The uranium replaces calcium in the calcium-phosphate
structure of the teeth. Some have complained about grand mal seizures,
cerebral palsy. Some diseases reported at very high rates in Air
Force and Army soldiers are Parkinsons disease, Lou Gehrigs disease,
and Hodgkins disease. This is damage to the mitochondria in the
cells and the nerves. The mitochondria make all the energy for the
body, so when you damage mitochondria, another symptom is chronic
fatigue syndrome. Theres just not enough energy produced by the
body to function normally.

I found a study in the SanDia Nuclear Weapons Laboratory employee
newsletter in September 2003. They are doing major studies in
mitochondrial disfunction related to Lou Gehrigs, Hodgkins, and
Parkinsons diseases for veterans. Since its at a nuclear weapons
lab, they are fully aware of the health damage.

ICONOCLAST: Tell me about the tests that detect for DU in the body.

MORET: The chromosome test in the best indicator. Its $5,000. The
urine test is a $1,000. If you test positive with the urine test,
you know youre contaminated. If you test negative, it does not mean
that youre not contaminated. It just means that you may or may not
be contaminated but enough hasnt dissolved in your blood stream to
go through your kidneys to be excreted in your urine. Anyone who
goes now cannot avoid being contaminated. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone.
Everyone who goes to the Middle East and Afghanistan will be
contaminated.

The DU issue affects every single living thing on this planet. What
else has that impact? They have altered the genome for the entire
planet forever with this DU. The Pentagon people say, Youre
exaggerating or you use the uranium word to scare people. I dont
care if people believe me or not. All I can say is that over time
what I am saying will actually be an underestimation of the long
term effects.

What Is Depleted Uranium?

A Scientific Perspective

Interview with Leuren Moret, Geo-Scientist

A Military Perspective

Interview with Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D, former Director of the U.S.
Army Depleted Uranium Project

A Survivors Perpsective

Interview with Melissa Sterry, Gulf War Veteran who is surviving
the effects of depleted uranium

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/News/19news03.htm
*****************************************************************
 46 [NukeNet] Cancer Said To Be No.1 Killer Over Heart Disease
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 16:04:08 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
NukeNet Anti-Nuclear Network (nukenet@energyjustice.net)





http://www.sfbayview.com/052505/outrage052505.shtml

             Cancer: where's the outrage?

             Nuclear, chemical and asbestos wastes
at Hunters Point and elsewhere make cancer No. 1
killer

             by Janette D. Sherman, M.D.

             "Cancer Tops Heart Disease as No. 1
Killer," screamed the article, but it was buried
on page A-12 of the Jan. 20, 2005, Washington
Post. Seems that for the first time in our
history, all of us younger than 85 will die of
cancer before any other cause.

             This is awful! Why aren't we up in
arms; marching in the streets, yelling at Congress
and the nation's "health" agencies? Is it because
we are inundated with ads on television touting
the latest treatments, showing a smiling women who
took "Drug X" so that she could go to her daughter
's wedding or the smiling man playing with his
grandchild after taking "Drug Y"?

             What's wrong with us? Why aren't we
outraged? Why are we accepting this cancer
epidemic as something natural?

             We don't know all of the causes of
cancer, but we know enough of them to do something
about them. Why aren't we? When we see changes in
cancer incidence, either for the worse or for the
better, why don't we seize on that information and
do something with it?

             In 1986 women in San Francisco and
Philadelphia had comparable death rates for breast
cancer, which stood at 140 per 100,000. By 1995
the death rate for women in Philadelphia was 160
per 100,000 compared to 100 per 100,000 for women
in San Francisco.

             One plausible explanation is that the
Rancho Seco nuclear reactor in Sacramento was
closed permanently in 1989, thus ending nuclear
isotope contamination of a major source of
drinking water and food supply for the Bay area.
While the breast cancer rate for much of San
Francisco declined, the cancer rate for Hunters
Point residents did not decline.

             Several reasons come to mind. One,
Hunters Point was a major ship building area with
tons of asbestos, toxic chemicals and nuclear
contamination from ships used in the nuclear tests
conducted in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands.
Located at Hunters Point as well are the PG&E
power plant and a sewage treatment plant, each
polluting the community. The high rainfall and fog
that gives the city its character helps to
precipitate pollutants that don't fall on drier
areas.

             I worked at Hunters Point in the 1950s
and saw first hand the dust and asbestos particles
kicked up by the ship repair operations. My work
was at the U.S. Naval Radiation Defense
Laboratory, located at Hunters Point and
operational from 1946 until 1969.

             The "Rad Lab" did research on the
effects of nuclear radiation and thermal burns,
burns being one of the most damaging and unspoken
effects of an atomic bomb. It was grizzly work
involving hundreds of rat experiments.

             That experience made me aware of the
extreme hazards of nuclear radiation and increased
my desire to go to medical school. In the 1980s I
returned to San Francisco as a physician to
examine workers who had been exposed to asbestos
at the Hunters Point Shipyard.

             Asbestos causes not only lung cancer
and mesothelioma, but also cancers of the
gastrointestinal tract, a suffocating fibrotic
lung disease and malignancies associated with
immune dysfunction, including leukemia, lymphoma,
sarcoma and myeloma. Mesothelioma is a rare
cancer, but in the course of two days I examined
three former Hunters Point Shipyard workers with
the disease, more than most physicians see in a
lifetime of practice.

             Subsequently, I testified at trial on
the workers' behalf. I cited an article in a
British Medical Journal upon which I relied for my
opinion that asbestos causes cancer. The defense
attorney challenged me saying that no one in the
U.S. could be expected to keep up with science
published overseas. When I pointed out that the
journal had "New York Public Library - Harlem
Branch" stamped in the upper corner, he asked no
more questions.

             Linked to the Hunters Point asbestos
pollution is the small town of Libby, Montana. In
June 2000 I met with people from that small town
of 3,000 residents. Some 55-plus asbestos victims
and their families came to my talk. Several people
remarked that they found it significant that
although the meeting had been well publicized, not
one person from the medical community, the town
government, nor anyone from EPA or ATSDR (Agency
for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry), then
working in Libby, came to the meeting.

             At the meeting, W.R. Grace employee
Les Skramstad was among the most articulate as to
the impact of asbestos upon himself, his family
and the community and how the information had been
covered up, even in 2000. I stayed that night in
Libby with a woman whose husband had died of
asbestosis. We were joined the next morning by two
neighbors whose husbands had died from asbestos
related cancers.

             Troubling too were the multiple people
who reported that doctors hired by the company
kept vital medical information from the workers,
thus workers continued to be exposed to asbestos
after there was clear evidence of ongoing harm.

             For William M. Corcoran, indicted vice
president of public and regulatory affairs for
W.R. Grace Co., to say, "The science did not
evolve quickly enough" is either wishful thinking
or the ultimate in spin. Asbestos has been known
to be hazardous since at least 1898, and by 1935
the asbestos link to cancer was established in the
scientific literature.

             There were even more scientific papers
linking asbestos to fibrotic lung disease, a
particular hazard for shipyard workers. Asbestos
was used in large quantities for fireproofing on
ships. Pipes were "lagged" (wrapped) with asbestos
paper and asbestos "mud" was packed into crevices.
It was very dusty work as was evident at Hunters
Point.

             The U.S. EPA is addressing the Libby
asbestos problem, although years late. The EPA
"knew more than 15 years ago that the asbestos
fibers were killing people in the small Montana
town of Libby but 'dropped the ball,'" EPA
toxicologist Christopher Weis said. "The agency's
headquarters was aware of the situation but never
passed the information along to the regional
office in Denver" (Washington Post, Jan. 1, 2000,
page A-5).

             Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania,
himself a cancer patient, introduced a bill to
create a $140 billion trust fund for those with
asbestos related diseases that were occupationally
exposed. Such a trust fund was discussed prior to
1982 by members of the advisory group to EPA's
Toxic Substance Control Act, of which I was a
member, and was rejected then as being inadequate
to cover the many people made ill by asbestos.

             Asbestos contaminates not only the
workers who mine, manufacture, install and
demolish asbestos-containing products, but also
the many people who process and use the products,
as well as residents who live in proximity to
these operations, which includes Hunters Point.

             Unfortunately, the bill before the
U.S. Congress does not include those exposed to
asbestos in their communities, even if they live
next to a facility where asbestos products are
manufactured or used, such as a shipyard. Staff
members of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
cosponsor of the bill, say that non-occupationally
exposed persons can file under the catchall
provision of the bill for "exceptional medical
claims." But it is not clear if the administrator
of the Trust Fund or the judiciary will consider
those claims.

             Even those exposed occupationally to
asbestos have to document their exposure and then
fulfill specific medical criteria, which is
difficult if companies have gone out of business
or declared bankruptcy.

             The only people included in the
asbestos bill specifically for environmental
exposure are those from Libby, Montana, who were
exposed to "take home" asbestos. While this may be
justice for Libby asbestos victims, it lets W.R.
Grace and EPA off the hook and does nothing for
others exposed elsewhere to environmentally spread
asbestos such as the people of Hunters Point.

             What will it take for us to express
our outrage when our next family member, friend or
neighbor is diagnosed with cancer? What will it
take to stop polluting and clean up our
communities?

             How much more asbestos, PCBs,
solvents, nuclear wastes, power plant emissions
will we tolerate before we do something? Clearly,
governmental agencies are failing to protect the
health of the public.

             The level of illness in Hunters Point
and Libby, Montana, as well as other communities
is not just a public health problem, it is a civil
rights problem. How much longer will we stand for
it?

             Why do we allow our federal government
to spend $200 trillion to wage war in Iraq yet
grant Halliburton/ Kellogg Brown and Root $72
million in bonuses and not clean up the nuclear,
chemical and asbestos wastes at Hunters Point and
other communities polluted by past activities. How
did we allow cancer to become the No. 1 killer
without noticing it?

             Janette D. Sherman, M.D., is an
internist and toxicologist and the author of "Life
's Delicate Balance: Causes and Prevention of
Breast Cancer," which is available through her
website, www.janettesherman.com or by emailing Dr.
Sherman at toxdoc.js@verizon.net.

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 47 [du-list] POISON DUST - Dr. Susan Harris DU video
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 16:05:20 -0700

 
<x-flowed>
       The dangers of D.U.

       JC resident produces video documentary on depleted uranium, its 
effect on soldiers returning from Iraq

       http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1291&dept_id=523586&newsid=14606998&PAG=461&rfi=9

             Ricardo Kaulessar
             Reporter staff writer  05/28/2005

       Jersey City resident Dr. Susan Harris has produced the new 
documentary "Poison Dust," which tells of three National Guard officers 
from New York City who, after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq in 
2003, noticed that they were suffering from unusual ailments, including 
migraine headaches, blurred vision and painful urination.

       What the three found out was that they were the victims of exposure 
to depleted uranium (DU), which is the waste left over when the highly 
radioactive types or isotopes of uranium are removed for use as nuclear 
fuel or nuclear weapons.

       Twice as heavy as lead, DU has been utilized in the U.S. military 
since the Persian Gulf War in 1990 for certain types of artillery shells, 
and for armor-plating in Abrams tanks.

       However, DU stays in the body, unlike natural uranium, which the 
body can release. Prolonged exposure has been cited as cause of cancer and 
skin ailments.

       The documentary, directed and edited by Harris and a team of video 
producers and researchers from the New York City-based Peoples Video 
Network (PVN), is a follow up to the 1997 PVN video, Metal of Dishonor, 
which told the story of soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf War in the 
1990s and how they suffered from exposure to DU.

       For Harris, a practicing psychologist, there was a simple reason for 
doing her recent documentary.


       "This information is still being covered up by the military and is 
not getting out to the mainstream," said Harris. "We need to inform the 
public further of the dangers of depleted uranium since it is being used 
more frequently and the soldiers in Iraq are serving much longer."
       The story



       "Poison Dust" tells the story of Sgt. Agustin Matos, Army National 
Guard Spec. Gerard Darren Matthew and Army Officer Raymond Ramos, all of 
whom are victims of exposure to DU.

       The documentary also traces how DU was first considered for use by 
the military, as well as the history of radioactive weapons being employed 
upon unsuspecting natives of such places as the Marshall Islands and 
Vieques, Puerto Rico, where the U.S. military has done atomic testing in 
years past.

       Also, there are interviews with scientists, activists and others 
knowledgeable about the dangers of DU. They include Dr. Helen Caldicott, 
one of the world's foremost experts on nuclear weapons, New York Daily News 
reporter Juan Gonzalez, whose investigative reports on the effects of DU in 
2004 led to U.S. Senate investigation on its use, Jersey City resident and 
longtime activist Sara Flounders, who has been researching the subject for 
years, and Major Doug Rokke, former head of the U.S. Army DU Project, who 
became a critic of its use and ended up losing his job.

       Harris said last week that she also interviewed Rosalie Bertell, who 
became one of her great sources on how DU becomes lodged in the body. 
Bertell is a nun who is one leading critics and authorities on the abuse of 
nuclear power.

       "Bertell educated on how depleted uranium forms into tiny balls in 
the lungs, and how it spreads in the air in the first place after the DU 
shells explode," said Harris.

       Harris has completed shorter versions of the documentary in the past 
year, but had the complete 84-minute version finished earlier this month. 
She already has shown the documentary at some schools and public forums, 
and she is getting mixed reactions.

       "At certain forums, there has been anger and outrage, with people 
calling for this practice by the military to end," said Harris. "But I 
remember recently a screening at a community college, where a large segment 
of the student population was in military service. They were angry but the 
consensus was 'this is how the military does things.'

       Harris is working presently on arranging some screenings in Jersey 
City and in Hudson County, especially in schools.

       For more information on acquiring a copy of "Poison Dust," call 
Harris at (917) 566-2257, or call the Peoples Video Network at (212) 
633-6646, ext. 15

  

</x-flowed>
*****************************************************************
 48 [DU-WATCH] BIG ANTI DU BILL CENSORED BY PRESS
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 09:53:27 -0500 (CDT)

 
All,

This is where the censorship started Tueaday. The self-censorship urge then
took over. The frightened American press prefers to report on Nancy Pelosi
loosing a shoe during a Capitol evacuation yesterday.  

This release is part of a discussion string about the American Servile Press
salaried employees at a site I frequent: OkYellowDog.com. You are welcome to
join the discussion. The Day of the Locusts, Jackals, Fascists, whatever
taking center stage was Tuesday when they made their move to censor this
story.

Regards,

Bob Nichols

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Bob Nichols
Project Censored Award Winner 
bob.bobnichols@gmail.com New email address.
 
Peter Kovacs, the Managing News Editor of the New Orleans Times- Picayune
Censors DU Testing Legislation Story

By Dennis Kyne
May 13, 2005, 07:43
  

Peter Kovacs, the Managing News Editor of the New Orleans Times- Picayune,
the regions major daily newspaper, in a telephone conversation with
veterans advocate Bob Smith, and a Times-Picayune political analyst stated
that a story concerning a bill giving the right for service women and men
from Louisiana to a best practices health-screening test for exposure to
depleted uranium would not be published. 

The reason Kovacs gave was because the bill was not costing the state any
money. Kovacs went on to say that the Times Picayune criteria for
newsworthiness was how much it would cost. 

The fact that the bill supports the troops health concerns is not the
criteria. Four other media outlets in the region have already covered the
story expressing concerns for the troops.

On Tuesday, May 3rd, The Louisiana State House of Representatives passed a
bill to give the right to all Louisiana Servicemen and women returning from
Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom for testing for depleted
uranium contamination. 

Louisiana is the first state in the nation to have their House pass this
type of bill. The vote was 101 to 0 in favor. 

The Louisiana Brigade, with approximately 4,500 National Guardsmen, is
expected to return home from Iraq between October and December 2005. 

DU is radioactive and can cause leukemia, DNA breakdown, various other
cancers, and birth defects in offspring of soldiers who have come into
contact with it. 

The VA and the DOD have been conducting testing that is not sensitive enough
to detect whether a soldier has been contaminated. 

This bill would have helped alleviate that by pressuring the States
Adjutant General to insure that the test mandated by DOD orders and Army
regulations would be executed. 

The money criteria used by the New Orleans Times-Picayune is shocking in
light of the fact that the country is at war and legislation supporting the
troops health concerns is of utmost importance. 
www.denniskyne.com

Former Sgt. Dennis Kyne 
 If you are wondering what it is like to be on the ground in Iraq during a
real live Nuclear Radiation War, Dennis Kyne is your man. Dennis is a former
Drill Sergeant who knows what it is like and describes the hazards of a
battle using Uranium based bullets, shells, land mines and bombs and the
present-time dangers of radioactive uranium gas. - Bob Nichols

 

Related link: http://www.denniskyne.com 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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 49 [DU-WATCH] Response to Wash. Times on Military Pay
 
Date: Sun, 29 May 2005 10:37:12 -0500 (CDT)

 
Jesse & JMarcella <garciajm@gte.net> wrote:Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 18:51:08 -0700
From: "Jesse & JMarcella" <garciajm@gte.net>
Subject: Subject: Fw: Military Pay

 
                SEMPER FI
DESERT SHIELD/STORM 1990 - 1991
           GULF WAR VET
        USMC     1980 - 1992 
  Jesse & Joanne Marcella Garcia
          garciajm@gte.net

-------Original Message-------
 
From: Jill Welker
Date: 05/01/05 12:11:38
To: "Undisclosed-Recipient:,"@in2.strato.net
Subject: Fw: Military Pay

 
WHETHER OR NOT WE SUPPORT THE WAR...OUR SERVICEMEN AND WOMEN NEED OUR SUPPORT IN EVERY WAY!!!

Subject:  Military Pay

This is an Airman's response to Cindy Williams' editorial piece in the
Washington Times about MILITARY PAY, it should be printed in all
newspapers across America.

On Nov. 12, Ms Cindy Williams (from Laverne and Shirley TV show) wrote a
piece for the Washington Times, denouncing the pay raise(s) coming service
members' way this year -- citing that the stated 13% wage was more than
they deserve.

A young airman from Hill AFB responds to her article below. He ought
to get a bonus for this.

"Ms Williams:

I just had the pleasure of reading your column, "Our GIs earn enough"
and I am a bit confused. Frankly, I'm wondering where this vaunted
overpayment is going, because as far as I can tell, it disappears
every month between DFAS (The Defense Finance and Accounting
Service)and my bank account.  Checking my latest earnings statement
I see that I make $1,117.80 before taxes. After taxes, I take home
$874.20. When I run that through the calculator, I come up with an
annual salary of $13,413.60 before taxes, and $10,490.40, after.

I work in the Air Force Network Control Center where I am part of
the team responsible for a 5,000 host computer network. I am involved
with infrastructure segments, specifically with Cisco Systems equipm
ent. A quick check under jobs for Network Technicians in the
Washington, D.C. area reveals a position in my career field, requiring
three years experience with my job.  Amazingly, this job does NOT
pay $13,413.60 a year. No, this job is being offered at $70,000 to
$80,000 per annum...I'm sure you can draw the obvious conclusions.

Given the tenor of your column, I would assume that you NEVER had
the pleasure of serving your country in her armed forces.   Before
you take it upon yourself to once more castigate congressional and
DOD leadership for attempting to get the families in the military's
lowest pay brackets off of WIC and food stamps, I suggest that you
join a group of deploying soldiers headed for AFGHANISTAN; I leave
the choice of service branch up to you.

Whatever choice you make, though, opt for the SIX month rotation:
it will guarantee you the longest possible time away from your
family and friends, thus giving you full "deployment experien ce."
As your group prepares to board the plane, make sure to note the
spouses and children who are saying good-bye to their loved ones.
Also take care to note that several families are still unsure of
how they'll be able to make ends meet while the p! rimary breadwinner
is gone -- obviously they've been squandering the "vast" piles of
cash the government has been giving them.

Try to deploy over a major holiday; Christmas and Thanksgiving are
perennial favorites. And when you're actually over there, sitting
in a foxhole, shivering against the cold desert night; and the
flight sergeant tells you that there aren't enough people on shift
to relieve you for chow, remember this: trade whatever MRE
(meal-ready-to-eat) you manage to get for the tuna noodle casserole
or cheese tortellini, and add Tabasco to everything. This gives
some flavor. Talk to your loved ones as often as you are permitted;
it won't nearly be long enough or often enough, but take what you
can get and be thankful for it. You may have picked up on the fact
that I disagree with most of the points you present in your opened
piece.

But, tomorrow from KABUL, I will defend to the death your right to
say it.

You see, I am an American fighting man, a guarantor of your First
Amendment rights and every other right you cherish. On a daily
basis, my brother and sister soldiers worldwide ensure that you and
people like you can thumb your collective nose at us, all on a
salary that is nothing short of pitiful and under conditions that
would make most people cringe. We hemorrhage our best and brightest
into the private sector because we can't offer the stability and
pay of civilian companies.

And you, Ms. Williams, have the gall to say that we make more than
we deserve? Rubbish!

A1C Michael Bragg  Hill AFB AFNCC

IF YOU AGREE, PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE
AND SHOW OUR SUPPORT OF THE AMERICAN FIGHTING MEN AND WOMEN. THANK
YOU

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 50 Hudson Reporter: The dangers of D.U.
                                
 JC resident produces video documentary on depleted uranium, its 
effect on soldiers returning from Iraq
    
      POISON DUST - "Poison Dust" is the new documentary by
Jersey City resident Dr. Susan Harris about the dangers of
depleted uranium.      


Jersey City resident Dr. Susan Harris has produced the new
documentary "Poison Dust," which tells of three National Guard
officers from New York City who, after returning from a tour of
duty in Iraq in 2003, noticed that they were suffering from
unusual ailments, including migraine headaches, blurred vision
and painful urination. 

What the three found out was that they were the victims of
exposure to depleted uranium (DU), which is the waste left over
when the highly radioactive types or isotopes of uranium are
removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. 

Twice as heavy as lead, DU has been utilized in the U.S.
military since the Persian Gulf War in 1990 for certain types of
artillery shells, and for armor-plating in Abrams tanks. 

However, DU stays in the body, unlike natural uranium, which the
body can release. Prolonged exposure has been cited as cause of
cancer and skin ailments.

 The documentary, directed and edited by Harris and a team of
video producers and researchers from the New York City-based
Peoples Video Network (PVN), is a follow up to the 1997 PVN
video, Metal of Dishonor, which told the story of soldiers who
fought in the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s and how they
suffered from exposure to DU.
JERSEY CITY REPORTER 

Copyright © 1995 - 2005 PowerOne Media, Inc.All Rights Reserved.
*****************************************************************
 51 Paducah Sun: Sick worker claims date on track: U.S. - 

Paducah, Kentucky 

The Department of Labor was given until May 26 to have
regulations set up for the claims backlog and says it is 'on
track.' 

By Joe Walker
 jwalker@paducahsun.com
 270.575.8656 
Thursday, May 19, 2005 

Raleigh Struble and other sick former nuclear workers will be
watching closely starting next week to see how well the U.S.
Department of Labor expedites a huge claims backlog inherited
from the Department of Energy. 

Federal law signed Oct. 28 by President Bush gave the department
210 days (to May 26) to issue regulations and have staffing and
procedures in place to compensate workers sickened from toxic
exposure. 

"The department is on track to have the regulations completed by
May 26," Victoria Lipnic, assistant secretary for employment
standards, said Wednesday in a prepared statement. 

Congress transferred the program from the Energy Department,
which had 25,000 claims backlogged nationwide, including nearly
3,400 at Paducah. Last year, just before the transition, Struble
received a finding from a DOE physicians' panel that he was
suffering from lead poisoning stemming from his machinist work
at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant from 1967 to 1978. 

Despite favorable findings for Struble and other former plant
workers, there was no way under the DOE system to force
employers or their workers' compensation insurers to pay claims.
Congress changed that by making the Labor Department the payer,
but the time lag has added another six months to the several
years some workers have waited for checks. 

"I'm getting to where I can't walk across the room without my
walking stick or holding onto furniture," said Struble, 83, of
Paducah, who also has diabetes and suffers from neuropathy. "My
feet are completely dead — I can't feel a thing in them — and
it's going into my hands." 

He said he has been told it will be at least June before the new
program begins paying a substantial number of claims. 

Earlier this year, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao said she could
not estimate how long it would take to work through the backlog
but said her agency would do its best. To absorb the load, the
Labor Department was hiring 200 more claims examiners either
directly or by contract. 

The revised law provides that nuclear workers exposed to toxins
could get up to $250,000 for lost wages and bodily impairment.

Some of the sickest workers, who were paid $150,000 under a
separate program for radiation-induced cancer and beryllium
disease, could receive as much as $400,000 under both programs. 

The new program allows surviving spouses and dependent children
of workers who died from toxic exposure to receive up to
$175,000. For inclusion, at the time of the worker's death an
eligible child must have been under 18, a full-time student
under 23, or any age and incapable of self-support. 

In previous public meetings, adult children of deceased workers
complained that the child-survivor provision is unfair and
should be changed. Lawmakers have expressed empathy, but say it
was extremely difficult to pass the entitlement law even with
existing provisions. 

Struble hopes for enough money to help him afford assisted
living for him and his wife, Velta, who is in a nursing home
rehabilitating from a leg injury. He said he retired from the
plant after managers threatened to fire him because of excessive
absenteeism related to illness. 

Workers used "white lead" spray lubricant to tap holes until the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration banned the aerosol
cans, Struble said, but the plant continued to mix the lead with
cutting oil to lubricate large drilling machinery. 

"It slung the oil all over everything, including the operators.
You might as well say we took a bath in it," he said. "But they
didn't tell us it would cause health problems." 
*****************************************************************
 52 Bradenton Herald: DEP says Tallevast site needs new work

| 05/28/2005 | 

Lockheed Martin warned the site assessment lacking in plume
details

 DONNA WRIGHT

 Herald Staff Writer

Lockheed Martin Corp. has a lot more work to do to measure the
extent, depth and migration of plume of contamination that has
put the historic community of Tallevast at risk, according to
the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. 

What the defense giant has submitted so far falls short of
meeting what the state wants, DEP said Friday. 

DEP's long-awaited response to Lockheed's latest data was
released in a letter from Tallevast project manager William
Kutash to Ron Helgerson, Lockheed Martin's point man for the
cleanup program. 

Kutash said the data provided by Lockheed in January, March and
April has not adequately assessed the location of the plume, the
degree and extent of contamination and the rate and direction of
the migration of the plume. 

Nor does that data adequately demonstrate how the plume might be
affecting different aquifer levels, the letter states. 

The Tallevast underground plume stems from the former Loral
American Beryllium Co. 

As former owners of the beryllium plant when the contamination
was discovered in 2000, Lockheed Martin has assumed
responsibility for cleaning up the toxic mess. 

Although the contamination was reported to the state and county
in 2000, Tallevast residents did not learn about the poisons in
their backyards until 2003. 

As the state's environmental regulatory agency, DEP has
oversight over the cleanup. 

Late Friday, Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Gail Rymer was trying
to track down the company's copy of the letter. 

"At this point, we have not received it and as soon as we have
had a chance to look at it, we will provide comment," she said. 

Rymer said that comment would likely come Tuesday. 

DEP spokeswoman Pamala Vazquez said the state is looking for
more information. 

"The site assessment they supplied does not adequately address
the extent and migration of the plume," Vazquez said. "We are
working through the consent order to make sure that all areas we
have asked them to check will be checked." 

Lockheed must submit a remedial cleanup plan in 60 days. 

DEP also plans to meet with the Tallevast community and leaders
of Family Community United and Strong, an advocacy group
representing residents sometime in the near future. 

FOCUS had asked DEP to require Lockheed to do more soil sampling
within the community and to test the water in a retention pond
in front of the former beryllium plant that is now owned and
operated by WPI Inc., a cable manufacturer. 

DEP required Lockheed to comply with residents request in
Friday's letter. 

"DEP takes very seriously the community's concerns," said
Vazquez. "We want to know the specific and exact areas the
community wants tested." 

DEP is awaiting comments from FOCUS. 

"We got the report to Lockheed Martin and FOCUS as promised,"
said Vazquez. "We will address the concerns of FOCUS.
Safeguarding the health of residents is a priority and that is
the main reason why we are asking for more information." 

Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS, reserved comment
until residents have had a chance to digest the letter. 

Tom Varney, an environmental consultant for FOCUS, was also sent
an e-mail copy of the letter but as of late Friday he was in
transit to his home and had not read DEP's comments. 

Reached by cell phone, Varney said he had been in contact
earlier with DEP and that Kutash had asked for advice on
additional work that needs to be done and what should be
required of Lockheed. 

Varney predicted there are more surprises to come. 

"I cautioned people that the plume is going to be a lot bigger
than a lot of people thought," said Varney. "The plume is now
more than 131 acres and I suspect that by the time is is over it
will be larger than that." 

Varney also suspects that there may be more than one source of
contamination and that Lockheed Martin may not be the only
liable party in the plume cleanup. 

Varney said he has suggested to both Lockheed Martin and to DEP
that drilling data be fed into a computer program that can
analyze the source and content of the contamination and compare
in with a historical record what what industries and factories
operated in the area. 

Varney said it would be a difficult process to separate whose
pollution was whose, but it could be done. 

Most important, said Varney, is the need for a human health risk
assessment. 

"The community has been saying over and over again, 'What does
this mean? Our soil is contaminated. Our water is contaminated.
What does this mean for the future of our community and
residents?' " 

The answers, predicted Varney, will be a long time coming. 

"We need a comprehensive human health risk assessment," said
Varney. "That is in essence what DEP is requiring of Lockheed.
That is a big undertaking that will take a multi-disciplinary
team. It will be a fairly extensive document that will take time
to produce." 

Varney doesn't expect those results until year's end at best. 

In the meantime, the community grows more fearful and angry,
said Varney. 

"The community situation has gone from mistrust to fear and then
to anger," said Varney. "That is an unfortunate situation. The
answers won't come quickly and it will be a frustrating
process." 

Vazquez said DEP is committed to getting the answers Tallevast
needs. 

So is the Manatee County Health Department, said Charles Henry,
supervisor of environmental health. Henry also received a copy
of DEP's letter on Friday. 

"The Manatee County Health Department," said Henry, "will
continue to monitor both the responses to DEP's comments and any
other testing that may result as part of our continuing effort
to protect the health and welfare of the Tallevast community." 

Herald watchdog 

This report is part of The Herald's in-depth coverage of toxic
contamination stemming from the former Loral American Beryllium
Co. in Tallevast. 

HeraldToday.com 

Review the full text of the DEP's statement online.   

*****************************************************************
 53 Bellona: Thorp Leak at Sellafield continued unchecked for 9 months 
say British nuclear officials and media
 
The leak of 20 tonnes of plutonium and uranium liquid mixed with
nitric acid discovered last month at Sellafield’s controversial
Thorp reprocessing facility had apparently been going on
undetected for nine months, constituting Britain’s worst nuclear
mishap in 13 years, Britain’s The Independent and UK nuclear
officials said Monday. 

  Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant.   
  BNFL   

Charles Digges, 2005-05-29 13:05

The event, classified by the seven-level International Nuclear
Event Scale (INES), was rated at a “3,” which the scale
indicates is a “serious incident” but is one step short of a
full-blown accident, was discovered when remotes cameras
investigated Thorp’s fuel clarrification cell on April 18. Once
the leak was discovered, the Thorp plant was immediately shut
down—and may remain so for good, according to officials with the
British Nuclear Decommission Authority (NDA), which as of April
1, took over ownership of 20 UK nuclear sites, among them
Sellafield, that are undergoing decommissioning. 

The fuel clarrification cell was inspected when plant workers
noticed a drop in the level of plutonium and uranium held in one
of Thorp’s two so-called Accountability tanks, which hold the
toxic mixture and where other elements such as metallic uranium,
or tailings, are separated out. The leak could have been going
on since August, officials at Sellafield said.

  Thorp leak officially ranked a “serious incident” as UK mulls
shutting plant down for good   

  A British Nuclear Group (BNG) official told Bellona Web Friday
that last month’s leakage of some 20 tonnes of plutonium and
uranium dissolved in nitric acid at Sellafield’s Thorp
reprocessing plant has been classified as a “serious incident”
on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).

But questions remain as to why this leakage was not discovered
for nine months, and why camera inspections of the fuel
clarification cell—which cannot be entered by humans—are carried
out on such an infrequent basis, especially in such a volatile
area of the plant. According to British Nuclear Group (BNG),
formerly BNFL, officials that are managing the site for the NDA,
the leakage was caused by a ruptured pipe leading from one of
these Accountability tanks. 

It remains unclear, said BNG officials, whether the leak
resulted from a flaw in the pipe or in a suspected welding error
that joined the pipe to the tank. Nonetheless, officials with
BNG, NDA and UK’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII)
asserted again that the leak posed no danger to the population
of West Cumbria, England, where Sellafield is located, or to
plant workers. 

What is the clarrification cell? 

Efforts to remove the toxic mixture and clean out the fuel
clarrification chamber began on May 19, one BNG official said.
Thorp’s fuel clarification cell comprises a stainless
steel-lined space 60 metres long, 20 metres wide and 20 metres
high and its concrete walls are 2 to 3 metres thick to absorb
radiation. BNG Sellafield’s spokesman Nigel Monckton said the
cell was designed to withstand the possibility of a leak and,
because stainless steel does not dissolve in nitric acid, the
leak has been contained. 

"There has been no radiation dose to Sellafield workers as a
result of the leak and no release of radioactivity into the
atmosphere," confirmed a spokesman for NII. 

Thorp’s raw materials are the used fuel rods from nuclear power
stations. After receipt at Thorp, they are stored for several
months to allow the radioactivity of short-lived fission
products to decay to safer levels. The 1-metre long,
1-centimetre diameter tubular rods are then cut up into small
chunks and lowered in baskets into strong nitric acid. 

The uranium, plutonium and fission products dissolve and the
remnants of the steel rods are removed. But the fluid remaining
from the process, called liquor, still contains small shards of
steel, or tailings, from burrs created as the rods were chopped
up. So the liquor must be centrifuged to get rid of the steel
contaminants, a process called clarification. It is at this
clarification stage that the leak occurred.

  Sellafield’s Thorp reprocessing plant incident perturbs an
impatient Europe   
  
  The European Union's executive Commission has renewed calls
for tougher EU nuclear safety standards on Tuesday after part of
Britain's Sellafield Thorp reprocessing facility was shut down
after a broken pipe leaked 83 cubic meters of a uranium and
plutonium solvent into a steel chamber designed for such
purposes.

What lead to the leak 

The leak was the result of a catalogue of human and engineering
errors which resulted in a pool of nuclear liquid, called
liquor, half the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, being
accidentally discharged, the Independent reported. The magnitude
of the incident throws the future of the troubled reprocessing
plant into doubt this weekend as copies of an internal
investigation circulate among senior ministers and officials. If
the NDA was considering shutting down Thorp for economic
reasons, one NDA official told said earlier this month, then the
current revelations may have “sealed up its closure for
environmental hazards reasons, the official told Bellona Web
Monday. 

Indicators ignored 

BNG Saturday night admitted to the Independent that workers
failed to respond to "indicators" warning a badly designed pipe
had sprung a leak as long ago as last August, said the
Independent. The pool of nuclear liquor, 83,000 litres, was
eventually discovered on 18 April. BNG has ordered a review to
check for other potential leaks caused by metal fatigue and an
urgent drive against staff "complacency" said various of its
representatives to Bellona Web Monday. 

But UK ministers privately concede that Thorp, now owned by a
the NDA, may never re-open as a result of the incident. In an
official statement released yesterday the NDA said it needed
time to assess the report's findings before "discussing their
implications" with the company and the Government, adding that
"safety is the NDA's absolute priority". 

The nuclear clean-up agency is thought to be fighting a battle
with the government of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to close the
plant for good in a move that would cost taxpayers billions of
pounds, the Independent reported. 

The leak comes as ministers and nuclear firms are preparing to
seek public support for a new generation of nuclear power
stations to help meet climate change targets. It explains why
Tony Blair and Alan Johnson, the new Secretary of State for
Trade, have been so reluctant to start making the nuclear case. 

Criminal charges for BNG?
 The company may yet face a criminal prosecution, the
Independent reported. A spokesman for the Nuclear Installations
Inspectorate (NII) told the paper: "I can confirm we will be
seeking to find out what monitors were in place, whether they
were working and, if so, why they were not acted on." 

Four inspectors have been at Sellafield since the incident
happened. In addition to human error, they are concentrating on
why engineers failed to modify pipes leading to moveable tanks.
Metal fatigue in the pipe work was the principal cause of the
leak. 

It is thought that the investigation will continue for a number
of weeks before a decision is made on further action against
BNG.. 

A spokeswoman for the Department of Trade and Industry said that
Mr Johnson would wait until the completion of the NII probe
before deciding on the plant's future, the Independent said. 

"It is essential that BNG acts urgently to implement the
recommendations to improve operating practice and retrieve the
escaped liquid. We are going to wait for advice before taking a
decision on the way forward."   

  Publisher: Bellona Foundation, President: Frederic Hauge
Information: info@bellona.no, Technical contact:
webmaster@bellona.no
Telephone: +47 23 23 46 00 Telefax: +47 22 38 38 62  * P.O.Box
2141 Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway
*****************************************************************
 54 BBC: Sellafield leak 'lay
 
Last Updated: Saturday, 28 May, 2005
 
		 		 		 
[Thorpe reprocessing plant]                             
The Thorpe plant handles spent nuclear fuel                                                              

A leak at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria 
was not spotted for three months, an investigation has revealed. 

More than 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium spewed onto 
a floor when a pipe fractured at the Thorp reprocessing complex 
in January. 

The British Nuclear Group, which carried out the inquiry, 
stressed that the material leaked into a sealed cell. 

The discovery was made after a camera inspection of the cell in 
April. 

It was classified as a level 3 accident by the International 
Nuclear Event Scale (INES) because of the acid released in the 
incident. 

INES measurements listed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster as a level 7 
incident and Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 as 
level 5. 

I am disappointed that pla indicators were not acted upon as 
quickly as they should have been Sellafield Managing Director 
Barry Snelson      

The leak occurred when a pipe - just a few centimetres wide - 
fractured, sending nitric acid onto the floor of the 
concrete-lined cell. 

The cells, which are 60 metres long and 20 metres high, are not 
accessible to staff and no-one was exposed to radioactive 
material. 

According to the British Nuclear Group's findings, the pipe 
failed because of metal fatigue, which may have started to occur 
as early as August 2004. 

The report recommended that improvements be made to the 
maintenance and testing procedures at Thorp, which remains closed 
since the leak. 

Complacency addressed 

Detailed reviews into engineering and operating practices 
throughout the plant should also be conducted, it concluded. 

Barry Snelson, Managing Director at Sellafield, said: "I will 
personally be ensuring that recommendations are implemented not 
just in Thorp, but across Sellafield. 

"I am disappointed that plant indicators were not acted upon as 
quickly as they should have been and I shall be taking action to 
ensure that any complacency with respect to acting upon plant 
information is addressed." 

Sellafield staff are confident that Thorp can be returned to 
service, he added.                                                       



*****************************************************************
 55 Sunday Herald: Publication delay for secret nuclear dump list - 
 
  By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor 
 
 Publication of a highly sensitive and long-secret list of
potential nuclear waste dumps, many of which are suspected of
being in Scotland, has been delayed by the government in
defiance of a plea from its advisers.

The Committee on Radio active Waste Management (CoRWM), which is
drawing up a nuclear disposal strategy for ministers, had
demanded the list be released before June. But it will not be
published before the middle of the month, after it has been
checked by defence and environment officials in Whitehall.

CoRWM fears the publicity generated by the release of the list
could damage its attempts to win public confidence in its
programme. It is considering whether radioactive waste should be
stored above the ground or buried in a deep underground
repository, and is due to make recommendations to ministers next
year.

The list, which has been kept under wraps for 15 years, names 12
sites short-listed in the late 1980s as geologically suitable
for burying nuclear waste by the governments waste agency,
Nirex. Two of the sites are known to be near the Dounreay
nuclear plant in Caithness, and two near the Sellafield plant in
Cumbria.

The location of the other eight, though, has always been a
closely guarded secret, along with an original list of 537 sites
from which they were selected. But new freedom of information
legislation has forced ministers to agree to the list being
unveiled.

The Sunday Herald has repeatedly asked for the list over the
years and, along with others, filed a formal freedom of
information request on January 4 this year. Since then, Nirex
has twice refused to provide the list because it did not want it
to come out in the run-up to the general election.

Nirex feared that in the heightened political atmos phere, the
government could be forced to rule out some of the short-listed
sites. This, it warned, would affect the legitimacy and
effectiveness of a new site selection process.

But at a meeting with local authorities, environmental groups
and journalists in Manchester last week, Nirex said it had
secured government agreement to publish the list in mid June. It
is intending to disclose the long list of 537 and the short list
of 12.

We asked CoRWM to come to the meeting and they sent a letter
with their preferred timetable. Its unfortunate but we dont
think that timetable can be met, said David Wild, Nirex
spokesman.

We are agreeing an actual timetable with the government. What we
are trying to do is to publish the information in a way that
will be seen to be helpful to the future process.

CoRWMs chair, Gordon MacKerron, was disappointed at the delay.
Its a pity, but Im glad the information is going to be published
shortly, he told the Sunday Herald.

This is a very clear demonstration of the importance of being
open and transparent, because if you arent it inevitably leads
to all kinds of mistrust and suspicion.

MacKerron had asked Nirex, in a letter on May 12, to publish the
list no later than the beginning of June, well before CoRWMs
national stakeholder forum in Manchester on June 7 and 8.
Further delay could cause significant risk to CoRWMs programme,
he warned.

The delays in releasing the list have also been criticised by
local authorities and environmental groups. We have yet another
delay in releasing this list, which should have been made public
15 years ago, said Pete Roche, the policy adviser to Nuclear
Free Local Authorities (Scotland).

Nirexs plan to organise the managed release of the inform ation
was just a way of trying to spin it in the best possible way for
the government, he claimed. Any sites on the list, more than
half of which are thought to be in Scotland, are likely to
feature on any future nuclear waste dump list  yet another
reason to avoid building new waste-producing nuclear facilities.

Although Nirex stresses the list is historic, it cannot rule out
the possibility that some of the same sites would be chosen in a
future selection process if deep disposal becomes the chosen
option. It still regards Longlands farm, one of the short-listed
sites near Sellafield, as a very good site, though it was
rejected after a public inquiry in 1997. 
29 May 2005 

  © newsquest (sunday herald) limited. all rights reserved   
*****************************************************************
 56 The Star: Uranium waste to cross Indiana

May 29, 2005  

 Uranium waste to cross Indiana Shipments from Ohio to Texas
could start as soon as this week 
                                                                 
By Tammy Webber  
 
Truckloads of low-level radioactive waste could begin rolling
through Indiana as soon as this week, en route to Texas from a
former uranium processing plant near Cincinnati.

About 4,000 containers of uranium byproducts will be shipped on
flatbed trucks -- two 20,000-pound containers per truck, up to
15 shipments a day through the end of the year -- traversing
Indiana via I-74 and I-70, said Jeff Wagner, spokesman for Fluor
Fernald, the U.S. Department of Energy contractor cleaning up
the plant.

The trucks will take I-465 around Indianapolis, he said.

Grant Smith of Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, which has
opposed long-delayed federal government plans to ship spent
nuclear fuel through Indiana to Yucca Mountain in Nevada, said
he was unaware that the Ohio waste would be trucked through the
state.

"I'm not familiar with the characteristics of the (Ohio) waste,
but it makes the most sense to keep this type of waste away from
densely populated areas," Smith said.

But the risk of an accident is low, and, even if one happened,
it almost certainly would not result in a radiation release,
Wagner said.

The waste -- radium, thorium, polonium, lead and actinium --
will be mixed with concrete and coal ash in half-inch-thick
carbonized steel containers, and each shipment will be tracked
by the Global Positioning System.

"It makes good common sense to use the interstates," Wagner
said. "We can't use back roads and alleys to get from Cincinnati
to Texas."

This won't be the first time radioactive waste has been shipped
through Indiana.

Since the mid-1980s, more than 6,500 truckloads of waste from
the Ohio plant -- which from 1952 to 1989 processed and purified
uranium metal used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons --
have passed through the state en route to Nevada.

And since 1999, more than 150 trainloads of the plant's waste
have been shipped to Utah through Indiana, Wagner said. Those
shipments are expected to end early next month, he said.

State and local emergency management officials said they were
not worried.

The Indiana Department of Homeland Security will be notified of
the shipments, and local emergency workers along the route have
been trained to respond to an accident, department spokeswoman
Pam Bright said.

"We have no concerns," she said.

Lt. Dale True, Indianapolis Police Department liaison to the
Marion County Emergency Management Agency, said he's not worried
either, adding there is a greater danger from some chemicals
trucked through the area.

"We feel very comfortable," with the waste shipments, he said.
"God forbid, should an incident occur, we're prepared to respond
to that."

For more information, go to the Fernald Closure Project Web site
at . 

Call Star reporter Tammy Webber at (317) 444-6212.
Links to other web sites will open a new browser. IndyStar.com

*****************************************************************
 57 Rutland Herald: Legislators holding dry-cask storage hostage
 	 	 	 	
 May 29, 2005

Some Vermont legislators' votes seem to have a price: $4 million
a year for authorizing dry-cask storage of radioactive waste at
Entergy Vermont Yankee in Vernon to protect us from accidents
and terrorism.

Entergy is threatening to shut down Yankee prematurely instead
of paying this price. The New England Coalition on Nuclear
Pollution and Nuclear-Free Vermont are applauding, for this is
exactly what they want. Who do these state representatives
actually represent?

Public safety is the only issue, because radioactive waste will
be stored and must be protected in Vernon for the foreseeable
future whether or not Yankee is shut down.

Renewable energy is a worthy cause, but holding dry-cask storage
hostage to subsidizing it is not.

One can sense other legislators' discomfort; some of them have
said so. When those whom we haven't elected represent us, and
those whom we have elected follow their bidding, we have
government of the people, by the people, for some people.

Howard Fairman

Vernon
   
            	© 2005 Rutland Herald
*****************************************************************
 58 Independent: Revealed: huge Sellafield leak went undetected for 9 months

www.independent.co.uk

Plutonium was left lying in a puddle on the floor for nine months
Geoffrey Lean: The nuclear plant that should never have been

Revealed: huge Sellafield leak went undetected for 9 months
Full scale disclosed of worst nuclear accident for decade.
Catalogue of human error led to massive radioactive discharge.
Accident may force ministers to shut troubled plant for good By
Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor 

29 May 2005

Tens of thousands of litres of highly radioactive liquid leaked
unnoticed for up to nine months from a ruptured pipe in the
controversial Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield in what the
IoS can reveal was Britain's worst nuclear accident for 13
years. 

The leak, detected last month, was the result of a catalogue of
human and engineering errors which resulted in a pool of nuclear
liquor, half the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, being
accidentally discharged. The magnitude of the incident throws
the future of the troubled reprocessing plant into doubt this
weekend as copies of an internal investigation circulate among
senior ministers and officials. 

British Nuclear Group, the company that runs the plant, last
night admitted that workers failed to respond to "indicators"
warning a badly designed pipe had sprung a leak as long ago as
last August. The pool of nuclear liquor, 83,000 litres, was
eventually discovered on 19 April. The company has ordered a
review to check for other potential leaks caused by metal
fatigue and an urgent drive against staff "complacency". 

But ministers privately concede that Thorp, now owned by a
quango, may never re-open as a result of the incident,
classified as "serious" by the International Atomic Energy
Authority. In a statement released yesterday the Nuclear
Decommissioning Agency, the quango that inherited Thorp on 1
April, said it needed time to assess the report's findings
before "discussing their implications" with the company and the
Government, adding that "safety is the NDA's absolute priority". 

The nuclear clean-up agency is thought to be fighting a battle
with Downing Street to close the plant for good in a move that
would cost taxpayers billions of pounds. 

The leak comes just as ministers and nuclear firms are preparing
to seek public support for a new generation of nuclear power
stations to help meet climate change targets. It explains why
Tony Blair and Alan Johnson, the new Secretary of State for
Trade, have been so reluctant to start making the nuclear case. 

The company has stressed the leak was contained and that the
incident did not pose a threat to the public. 

The company may yet face a criminal prosecution. A spokesman for
the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) said: "I can
confirm we will be seeking to find out what monitors were in
place, whether they were working and, if so, why they were not
acted on." 

Four inspectors have been on the Cumbrian site since the
incident happened. In addition to human error, they are
concentrating on why engineers failed to modify pipes leading to
moveable tanks. Metal fatigue in the pipework was the principal
cause of the leak. 

It is thought that the investigation will continue for a number
of weeks before a decision is made on further action against
British Nuclear Group. 

A spokeswoman for the Department of Trade and Industry said that
Mr Johnson would wait until the completion of the NII probe
before deciding on the plant's future. 

"It is essential that BNG acts urgently to implement the
recommendations to improve operating practice and retrieve the
escaped liquid. We are going to wait for advice before taking a
decision on the way forward." 	           

©2005 Independent News &Media (UK) Ltd.   
*****************************************************************
 59 Boston Globe: Shut bases could get nuclear waste - 

Boston.com - Washington - News
 
  Shut bases could get nuclear waste Boston Globe WASHINGTON --
Closed military bases could become repositories for nuclear
waste under a little-noticed section of a spending bill that was
passed by the House this week, exacerbating the fears of local
lawmakers who are fighting the scheduled closure of four of New
England's biggest bases. Susan Milligan May 28, 2005 --> 
Shut bases could get nuclear waste
 
A $15.5m funding plan allows for reprocessing
 
By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff  |  May 28, 2005 

WASHINGTON -- Closed military bases could become repositories
for nuclear waste under a little-noticed section of a spending
bill that was passed by the House this week, exacerbating the
fears of local lawmakers who are fighting the scheduled closure
of four of New England's biggest bases.


The energy and water bill from the House Appropriations
Committee includes $15.5 million for reprocessing of nuclear
waste from power plants and construction of an interim nuclear
waste dump. The legislation does not specify where that dump
would be. But the Appropriations Committee report, which
explains the bill, suggests that mothballed military bases be
considered as potential sites for the waste. 

Lawmakers said the idea adds to the pain of a region that faces
the loss of 14,500 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars if
the recommendations by the Base Realignment and Closure
Commission are adopted. 

Maine lawmakers met yesterday with the chairman of the BRAC to
plead for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, which is
on the closure list, and the Brunswick Naval Air Station which
is to be ''realigned," or shrunk. 

''I'm very, very concerned about this. Our citizens would be
very upset," Maine Governor John Baldacci said when he was shown
the committee report language. He said he had been unaware of
the proposal, and ''to think that someone could put nuclear
waste there. . .is outrageous." 

Also slated for closure are Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape
Cod and the New London Naval Submarine Base in Groton, Conn. All
told, the closures in New England would represent half of the
29,000 job losses nationwide under the closure plan. 

Meanwhile, under fire from Congress, the Defense Department
promised yesterday to give lawmakers access by next Tuesday to
detailed material backing up its recommendations to shut down
about 180 military installations across the country. Parts of
the report are classified, so the Pentagon said legislators and
staff with security clearances must review that data at a secure
location in northern Virginia. 

The announcement comes in the wake of increasing demands from
lawmakers and state and local officials for the release of what
will be an unprecedented amount of data in defense of the base
closing plan. Lawmakers hope to use the information to persuade
the independent commission reviewing the base closings to remove
certain installations from the hit list. 

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Malden, said the
proposal to put nuclear waste on closed bases was an insult to
local communities that face a hardship from the job losses
attached to the closings. ''Congratulations -- you may have lost
your military facility, but you may be the winner of nuclear
waste coming to your community," Markey said. 

He sought to kill the idea of temporary nuclear waste dumps by
defunding it in the energy and water bill, but his amendment was
defeated, 312 to 110.   Continued... 1       [ /]  [Printer

  | help | site map | globe archives | rss © 2005 The New York
Times Company         [ /]         
*****************************************************************
 60 Cumbria Online: THORP SHOCK 

Published in News &Star on Saturday,
May 28th 2005
 
  Thorp: Sellafield boss insists that safety remains an absolute
priority  

By Julian Whittle

AN INVESTIGATION into the leak that closed Sellafield’s Thorp
plant has found nuclear fuel was seeping from a fractured pipe
for three months before it was detected.

British Nuclear Group has ordered improved testing and
maintenance of instruments that should have warned that the
mixture of spent uranium and plutonium fuel dissolved in acid
was going missing.

Operating practices throughout the Thorp reprocessing plant will
be reviewed. And engineering checks have been ordered across
Sellafield to spot stress-induced metal fatigue, which is
believed to have caused the pipe to fail.

Barry Snelson, managing director at Sellafield, said: “The
investigation has been extremely thorough and has identified the
root causes of the event.

“I will personally be ensuring that recommendations are
implemented not just in Thorp but across Sellafield.”

He was disappointed that the leak, discovered by a CCTV camera
on April 19, had not been found sooner.

Mr Snelson added: “I shall be taking action to ensure that any
complacency with respect to acting upon plant information is
addressed.

“Safety and environmental integrity remain our absolute
priority.”

Eighty-three cubic metres of highly-radioactive nuclear fuel
escaped. All of it was trapped in a steel-lined concrete cell,
designed to contain leaks. But the incident still forced the
closure of Thorp and cast doubt on its future.

It was a level three on the nuclear event scale.

The internal investigation found that the pipe probably
fractured in mid-January and may have started to fail in August
2004.

Had the leak been detected in January, the report says, the
quantity of liquid released could have been “significantly
reduced”.

Investigators believe the pipe failed because it fed a suspended
tank, subjecting it to high levels of stress.

Thorp is the only installation in Sellafield where this
arrangement applies.

British Nuclear Group has started a clean-up operation, which is
expected to take another four weeks.

The Government’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is also
investigating the leak.

Mr Snelson was confident that Thorp could reopen.

But Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive
Environment, believes Thorp should close.

He said: “If you look at what business is left for Thorp, there
is a small amount of overseas fuel to reprocess and fuel from
British Energy’s advanced gas-cooled reactors, which BNFL told
us is an uneconomic proposition.

“Reopening Thorp makes absolutely no sense to us.

“It was supposed to be an asset on the books of the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority but it is going to be a total
liability.”

*****************************************************************
 61 Brattleboro Reformer: Agreement is reached on VY waste

May 29, 2005 Brattleboro, VT                                                                                 
 			 								 					
By ROSS SNEYD 
Associated Press

MONTPELIER -- A deal has been reached that negotiators said
Thursday should mean the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant,
source of a third of the state's electricity, will continue
operating at least through 2012.

 State government would get as much as $28 million in return
that it would use to encourage creation of renewable energy
generators.

 The agreement will "provide an economic benefit for the people
of Vermont and allow us to operate this station safely through
the end of this license," said Ken Theobald, a regional
executive for plant owner Entergy Nuclear.

 The issue has been closely watched by utilities, credit rating
agencies and businesses because Vermont Yankee provides a third
of the state's entire energy supply at a cost that's lower than
the current market price for electricity. 

The agreement, reached after weeks of talks among Entergy, state
lawmakers and the Douglas administration, calls for the
Legislature to grant Entergy authority to store its spent
nuclear fuel above ground at its plant in Vernon, as long as the
state Public Service Board approves the specific storage plan.

 In return, Entergy would increase the amount it already has
agreed to pay the state in connection with its plan for boosting
electricity production at Yankee by 20 percent. That payment
would rise from $2 million a year to $4.5 million a year.

 The estimated $28 million that would be collected would be
deposited in a "clean energy fund" that would be used to
encourage development of new renewable energy generators.

 "It leads us toward a Vermont where increased energy efficiency
is a priority in Vermont, where good jobs are created," said
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Robert Dostis,
D-Waterbury, who was the Legislature's lead negotiator on the
deal.

 Gov. James Douglas was cautiously supportive of the deal. "I've
said if they can work it out that would be fine with me," he
said in a brief interview.

 He was somewhat critical of putting all of the money into the
clean energy fund instead of his initiative to clean up Lake
Champlain and other polluted waterways. "They're both
important," he said. "Given the fact the Legislature seems to be
reducing the appropriation from my Clean and Clear (Initiative).
I'm disappointed to see that erode even further."

 Advocates for renewable energy were thrilled with the deal.
Andrew Perchlik of Renewable Energy Vermont said the clean
energy fund would provide a pot of money that could be used as
an incentive to developing alternatives to Vermont Yankee and
Hydro-Quebec, which combined provide two-thirds of the state's
energy supply. Contracts with both begin to expire in 2012.

 "We're making investments now so we're avoiding problems in the
future," Perchlik said. "We can't wait until we run out of oil
or Vermont Yankee closes to make this transition."

 A bill allowing Entergy to apply to the Public Service Board
for what's known as dry cask storage of its spent nuclear fuel
has been drafted and must work its way through the Legislature
before adjournment, which leaders could come as early as next
week.

 Passage appears likely because House Speaker Gaye Symington was
intimately involved in the negotiations and Senate President Pro
Tem Peter Welch was involved, as well. They both said they were
satisfied with the deal and they organized a news conference
announcing it.

 "Did we get as much as we wanted? No," Welch said. "Did we get
more than was originally offered? Yes." 


Copyright © 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
*****************************************************************
 62 New Mexican: Governor urges LANL workers to be vigilant   
 	
May 28, 2005                                            

LOS ALAMOS -- On a visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory on 
Friday, Gov. Bill Richardson urged workers to raise their voices 
in protest rather than make hasty decisions in uncertain times. 

Many employees are tempted to retire as the first-ever
competition for the management of the nuclear-weapons lab
begins. They want to protect their lavish pension benefits
because they aren't sure what a change in management might bring.

"These are going to be uncertain times the next few months. But
hang in there and keep your powder dry and don't retire,"
Richardson said he told them. "Let's mobilize to let
decision-makers know how we want the provision relating to
retirement changed."

He echoed the same message at a sparsely attended town-hall
meeting in Fuller Lodge. 

The University of California Retirement Plan covers employees at
all university campuses and UC-run laboratories. But under
bidding criteria published last week by the U.S. Department of
Energy, that era must end at Los Alamos. The Request for
Proposals requires the next contractor to create a stand-alone
pension plan for Los Alamos employees only. 

Richardson doesn't consider that the final word, however,
because contract negotiations could alter the outcome. The
former energy secretary vowed to exert his influence on DOE in
concert with New Mexico's congressional delegation.

"But I think the single most-important advocates are lab
employees themselves. I think you have more power than you
think, especially the scientists who need to make their views
known," Richardson said. "I believe it's not in America's
interest for our best scientists to retire or leave right now.
And I believe the Department of Energy needs to realize that --
that this is a serious threat."

In this competition, UC, the incumbent, is teaming with
international engineering firm Bechtel National, a combination
that is new to employees. Lockheed Martin, which operates Sandia
National Laboratories in Albuquerque and California, is
partnering with the University of Texas.

The governor thinks UC/Bechtel is the better choice because of
its record in science and employee benefits.

Paul Robinson doesn't understand the fuss. The former director
of Sandia, who is now leading the Lockheed bid, wonders if Los
Alamos is planting fears by making a big deal of the fact that
200 people are signing up for retirement. That number, he said,
is typical. "It seems that people might be trying to preach the
sky is falling," Robinson said. 

He also wonders why people don't trust that the Energy
Department is trying to preserve benefits. The new contractor
must provide benefits that parallel what employees have now. 

"It's really hard to imagine what on earth would make people
panicky about pensions," Robinson said. "If you have years of
service in, you're going to get several options to choose. ...
The level of benefit is said to be substantially the same.
That's the instructions to all of us writing the bids."

Robinson has no qualms with a stand-alone pension plan.

"That's exactly how Sandia has operated, and we have actually
done as well or maybe slightly better in managing our pension
plan than has the University of California system," he said.

Sandia labs offer a pension plan and a "generously" matched 401K
retirement plan -- a package at parity with the current Los
Alamos plan, he said. 

Like the governor, Robinson hopes Los Alamos employees will wait
out the bidding process. "Certainly for people who are trained
in the scientific method, why you would jump on emotion and not
wait to see exactly what the factors are and make the
observation and then make a decision?" he said. "I have a
feeling things will look a whole lot better to them."

Proposals are due July 19. The Energy Department plans to award
the contract Dec. 1.

There's no rush, he said, noting the transition period between
contractors allows employees two months to weigh their options.

"It would be most unfortunate if people disrupted their lives
and made such precipitous changes based on poor information or
no information," Robinson said.		 	   	 	 	 			
 		   			 		   	 	
Copyright 2004 Santa Fe New Mexican                                                                                             
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 63 SF Chronicle: ANALYSIS: Los Alamos contract puts UC in PR battle 
Texas partnership leads opposing bid to run weapons lab
 
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
Sunday, May 29, 2005

The competition to decide who runs Los Alamos National
Laboratory is now fully under way, and its outcome will decide
whether California loses one arm in its two-handed grip on the
nation's nuclear weapons complex. 

Last week, after three years of Los Alamos scandals that ranged
from the sinister to the tacky to the dangerous -- scandals over
missing computer disks containing secret bomb data, an alleged
mispurchase of a Ford Mustang , and a woman who suffered a
severe eye injury while working with a laser -- the University
of California finally, definitively decided to fight for its job
as the lab manager. It faces a single titanic competitor, a team
jointly led by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and the enormous
University of Texas system. 

Thus UC, like an aging diva forced to audition for a part that
would have once been hers for the asking, must now go head to
head for the job with a competitor from a state better known for
its oil wells, arid plains and favorite son in the White House
than for its oft-excellent campuses. For its part, UC has teamed
with Bechtel National, the division of Bechtel Corp. that
carries out the firm's U.S. government contracts, and several
other partners. 

Last week, after more than a year of public dithering and
private anxiety, the UC regents finally voted, 11 to 1, to join
the competition for the next Los Alamos contract. The current
contract is held by UC and expires in September, but will
probably be extended pending the U.S. Energy Department
selection of the next contractor. The winner will be announced
about Dec. 1, Energy Department officials say. 

It's too early to say which of the two will prove to be the
abler sales team, capable of responding to public concerns on a
moment's notice. Both teams proved their mettle late last week,
when a chance remark by a former U.S. arms control official
inspired a reporter to raise a previously unplanned question:
Which of the team's candidates for director of Los Alamos has
the best qualifications? 

During an interview with a former U.S. government figure and
arms control negotiator, Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., a
reporter asked which of the two competitors he'd rather see in
charge of Los Alamos. 

Graham replied that he wouldn't take sides, noting that "they're
both outstanding bidders." Then, without prompting, Graham
emphasized his great respect for C. Paul Robinson, a physicist
with diplomatic experience whom the Lockheed Martin-Texas team
has selected as its choice for director of Los Alamos, should
that team win the competition. Robinson is also the former
president and director of Sandia National Laboratories. 

"I have the highest regard for the professional ability and
competence of Ambassador Paul Robinson," Graham said. "He is a
man with a broad technical background. ... He's also had
diplomatic experience. ... Diplomatic experience is useful
because inevitably our national laboratories have become
involved with their Russian counterparts (after the Cold War).
... In Paul Robinson's case, it's proven to be quite valuable
because of the relations he was able to develop between Sandia
and Kurchatov Institute, the premier Russian national lab." 

The reporter called Lockheed Martin for comment, and its
spokesman, Don Carson, took advantage of the opportunity to
regale the reporter with a glowing explanation of why Robinson
would be a terrific Los Alamos boss. 

"I believe Paul Robinson is the right person for this job,"
Carson declared. "I believe that so strongly that I came out of
retirement to work with him again on the Los Alamos project. ...
I think Paul is the finest leader I've worked with. ... He's
really a neat guy. You just don't meet people like him every
day. He's a true patriot." 

Robinson's competitor for the Los Alamos job is physicist
Michael Anastasio, whom the UC-Bechtel team has picked to lead
its campaign. Initially, given the holiday weekend, it looked as
though no UC publicist could be corralled by press time to
deliver for Anastasio the same heartfelt plea for Anastasio that
Carson gave for Robinson. A publicist at Anastasio's present
employer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- which UC
also manages -- 

did e-mail a reporter biographical information on Anastasio,
which didn't detail any experience in diplomatic relations or
arms control. 

But just in time, UC spokesman Chris Harrington countered
Lockheed Martin's serve with this tribute to Anastasio's
diplomatic background, stating in part: "Mike Anastasio has
extensive experience on the diplomatic and international front,
and has been working with Russians extensively. In addition, he
has a warm relationship with his Russian counterparts and is
well respected. ... Mike has also been a U.S. government
representative, on behalf of DOE, to England, France and the
former Soviet Union. ... In addition Mike has recent experience
working with the nuclear deterrent in support of U.S.
diplomacy." 

Unfair though it might seem, in the race to win the next Los
Alamos contract, those kinds of opportunities to score public
relations points might make a huge difference to the outcome. 

In a sense, one publicity expert says, UC faces the same
challenge that Wendy's did after someone claimed -- falsely,
police now say -- to have found a severed finger in a cup of
chili: to convince the public and politicians that UC can be
trusted to continue running the lab where the atomic bomb was
born. 

"In the pitched battle between perception and reality,
perception always wins," warns Steven Fink, a crisis management
adviser to numerous corporations struggling to repair damaged
reputations. He pointed out that, in this competition, UC has
both advantages and disadvantages -- advantages in the sense
that it has run Los Alamos for six decades, and disadvantages in
the sense that in recent years, it acquired the reputation,
fairly or unfairly, of having badly fumbled that mission. 

UC's trustworthiness has been in question since 2002, when Los
Alamos began enduring a series of scandals that wouldn't quit --
scandals over the security of classified information as well as
finances and safety. With FBI assistance, lab officials turned
the lab upside down in frantic efforts to find missing computer
disks with weapons information -- including, in one particularly
embarrassing incident, two disks that ultimately were believed
never to have existed. 

The lab's director was fired, along with some top officials, and
replaced by a tough-talking admiral who chewed out staffers --
he called some of them "cowboys" and "buttheads" -- in all-hands
meetings of the 12,000-employee lab. (In turn, the admiral was
replaced just this month with a veteran of the nuclear weapons
establishment.) 

Furious about the scandals, the Department of Energy and
Congress ordered that all future Los Alamos contracts be opened
to outside bidders. The final specifications for the next
contract were issued May 19, with a deadline of July 19 for
submissions. 

Can UC repair its reputation in time to win the next Los Alamos
contract? Fink, who has no connection with the competition,
suggested possible ways that it can. 

Crucially, the University of California "needs to demonstrate
conclusively that it would do a better job -- despite the
(scandal) baggage -- in managing this contract than its
competitors," said Fink, author of "Crisis Management: Planning
for the Inevitable" and president of Lexicon Communications
Corp. in Los Angeles, billed as "the nation's oldest and most
experienced crisis management firm." 

UC's scientists have "certain advantages, given the fact that
they do have a long and distinguished track record -- and I do
mean distinguished track record -- in managing the (previous Los
Alamos) contracts, the recent embarrassing events
notwithstanding," Fink said. Another advantage is UC's status as
an educational institution, which gives it an aura of
objectivity that the public doesn't necessarily associate with
private weapons corporations such as Lockheed Martin. UC, he
stressed, needs to emphasize these virtues to win back public
confidence. 

Also, Fink said, UC shouldn't hesitate to take advantage of one
of the oldest arguments in the book for maintaining the status
quo: Don't change horses in the middle of the stream. In that
regard, he said, UC can take advantage of current world
tensions. 

Fink said that if he were speaking for UC, he'd tell the public
and politicians: "What we're talking about here is managing
nuclear weapons, the most powerful weapons in the world, and ...
in light of what's going on in Iran and North Korea (which are
suspected of developing nuclear bombs), Los Alamos needs to be
run by an institution with experience, with no learning curve
ahead of it." 

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com. 				
Page A - 23 			

©2005 San Francisco Chronicle |
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 64 Oakland Tribune: Lab rhetoric turns insulting

Article Last Updated: 05/28/2005 04:24:06 AM                              
                 
Rival knocks UC after suggestion Lockheed lacks ability for Los 
Alamos
 			 			 			 			 			 			 
  By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER   

The head of a team challenging the University of California for 
command of the birthplace of the bomb is mightily offended by the 
university's suggestions that corporations such as his employer, 
Lockheed Martin, lack the ability or integrity to do real 
science. 

C. Paul Robinson, physicist and former Sandia National
Laboratories director, lashed back Friday, saying his team was
appalled at the lack of competent business practices and focused
scientific direction at Los Alamos National Laboratory, run by
the University of California since 1943. 

"No wonder science is hurting. You've got scientists with no
support for their work," Robinson said. "We think Sandia is a
good proof test that good processes are not incompatible with
goodscience. We know how to bring processes into being that can
streamline and simplify things for scientists." 

After a series of high-profile lapses in security, safety and
financial control at Los Alamos, the secretary of energy
concluded the lab was plagued by "systemic management failures"
and opened its management contract to competitive bidding for
the first time. 

More than a dozen defense and engineering contractors and
universities jockeyed for a shot at running the $2.2
billion-a-year laboratory. With 12,000 employees and 
subcontractors, Los Alamos performs a variety of unclassified and 
classified research but primarily is responsible for maintaining 
the H-bombs and warheads comprising 60 percent of the U.S. 
nuclear arsenal. 

The contest narrowed this week to two teams: the University of
California paired with Bechtel National and two nuclear firms
versus Lockheed, the world's largest defense contractor, paired
with the University of Texas and two firms experienced in
nuclear operations and cleanup — CH2M Hill, based in Englewood,
Colo., and Fluor Corp. 

University of California officials recently have suggested that
only academia has the scientific rigor and "moral strength" to
watch over the aging nuclear explosives in the U.S. arsenal and
objectively judge, for example, whether a return to nuclear
testing is necessary. A defense firm, they suggested, might not
encourage enough scientific depth to answer those questions or
might skew the answers in the interest of profits. 

Robinson said he felt insulted: "Wouldn't you be?" 

When Lockheed took over Sandia from AT, firm President Norman
Augustine called Robinson, the lab's new director, in for a talk
and said he'd always admired Sandias' 				 				 					 					
					 				 				 				 					 					 				 devotion to the interests
of the nation. He warned Robinson never to let anyone put
Lockheed's interest above those of the country. 

"'Don't let that happen', he said. 'If people won't listen to
you, my phone is always open to you, and I'll tell them,'"
Robinson recalled. "As a statement of academic freedom, I was
empowered as never before." 

Robinson said the idea of managing science is a bit of a
misnomer. Paraphrasing his friend, physicist Murray Gell-Mann,
he said, "the best scientific innovations happen at this
boundary between order and chaos." 

"You don't tread too far into order or you won't have science.
You also don't want to drift out into incoherence, and I wonder
if over the last five or 10 years if that hasn't been the case
at Los Alamos," Robinson said. 

National lab executives should set broad research agendas that
don't compete with universities but draw upon the labs'
strengths in having multiple disciplines working under one
outfit, he said. 

"That's about all the managing that I think you can do of
science," he said. "I hope to stimulate it out of the best minds
that are there and then set directions for the science quest
going forward to get people excited about things." 

But "we find almost no research themes that you can articulate" 
at Los Alamos, Robinson said. "There just don't seem to be any 
organizing principles." 

Lockheed's team found more lapses in basic business processes,
such as purchasing controls and personnel management. 

"There seems to be a great insufficiency of any kind of business
processes, and it's showed up again and again in the problems
that have come out in the press," Robinson said. 

Los Alamos executives were inexplicably slow to diagnose and fix
the problems, he said. 

In the last decade, Los Alamos has returned to a limited role
producing weapons components as the lab did in the Cold War. For
help with that work, Lockheed beat out Northrop Grumman in
negotiations for a teaming arrangement with CH2M Hill. 

The engineering and environmental firm helped dismantle and
clean up Rocky Flats, a defunct factory near Boulder, Colo.,
that made plutonium fission cores or pits until 1989. When
detonated by high explosives, they provide the atomic fire to
ignite all thermonuclear weapons. 

Los Alamos inherited the controversial job of making pits,
albeit just a few each year, while the government considers
building a larger factory. Plans for that factory 				 				
					 					 					 				 				 				 					 					 				 have stalled,
and each of the teams competing for the Los Alamos management
contract now will be judged on the ability to ramp up pit
production if requested by the federal government. 

CH2M Hill hired several former Rocky Flats pit makers and now
has what is believed to be the nation's only pit-making
expertise in the private sector. 

"They put a team together that numbers above 20 people figuring
that someday the United States is going to need pit
manufacturing again, and they wanted to be ready," Robinson
said. 

Lockheed plans to meld that talent with methods used at Sandia
to design weapons components partly for manufacturing ease and
reduced cost. 

"Instead of throwing a design over the transom to the production
plant, the folks doing the design will actually fabricate the
device in cyberspace and look at what changes will be necessary
to help manufacture it." 

For now, Los Alamos is moving toward making warhead pits to
replace the several removed from the nuclear arsenal every year
for routine examination and experiments to spot signs of aging.
But key lawmakers in Congress are prodding the Bush
administration toward redesigning weapons to resist aging and be
cheaper to make and maintain. 				 				 					 					 					 				
				 				 					 					 				 

Making pits for what Congress has called the Reliable
Replacement Warhead program could become part of Los Alamos'
mission if a larger factory is not built soon. But first,
Robinson said, the nation needs a wide-ranging debate on the
role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era. That debate
would point to what kinds of weapons the nation needs, he said. 

"Maybe if we get some real understanding of what the future
stockpile would look like, we could do some design to produce
weapons so their lifetimes will be a lot longer and many of us
wouldn't have to worry at night about corrosion and
deterioration," Robinson said. 

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com. 				 				
				 			   		 		 		
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